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Real-time tweets come to Google search

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 22 May 2015
Live tweets will soon appear in mobile Google search in the US, with desktop search and other countries to follow soon.
Live tweets will soon appear in mobile Google search in the US, with desktop search and other countries to follow soon.

Google's integration of real-time tweets in mobile search could be a wake-up call for companies. Negative tweets could now appear prominently in Google search results when a potential customer is looking for a particular company.

Google announced this week that tweets relevant to a particular search will now be featured as standalone results alongside the usual list of Web sites that are returned.

According to Craig Wynn, content manager at Cerebra, a Johannesburg-based social business agency and advisory, this means "companies will have to constantly improve their reputation management and customer relations on Twitter to avoid any kind of excessive negativity".

He adds the best way to do that is to narrow the gap between what a company promises and what it actually delivers.

Instead of "trying to game the system with search engine optimisation mastery", says Wynn, companies will have to focus on delivering.

It is not yet clear if every single tweet will show up in a search query.

Google senior product manager Ardan Arac says this addition to Google search results is "a great way to get real-time info when something is happening. And it's another way for organisations and people on Twitter to reach a global audience at the most relevant moments."

Jana Messerschmidt, VP of global business development and platform at Twitter, said in a post: "When tapping on a tweet in Google search, you'll be taken directly to Twitter where you can view the tweet and discover additional content."

Non-Twitter users will have to sign up for the service before exploring additional tweets related to their search.

At the moment, tweets will appear in Google.com in English in the Google app (on Android and iOS) and on mobile Web browsers. Arac said the company was "working on" bringing it to more languages and to desktop search. The roll-out will start in the US and expand to other countries within the next few months.

This update is the first to come out of a deal struck between Google and Twitter in February.

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