Over the weekend, it seems like Google put the brakes on carrying Twitter feeds in its real-time search results. Today, however, we have learned the reason. Twitter and Google had designed an agreement to allow Google to carry Twitter feeds in their real-time search results but that agreements expiration date was July 2nd – this past Saturday.
Google has confirmed that the service will be restored but that they do not have a timeframe for this to happen. A statement from Google to Search Engine Land reads:
Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2.
While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.
Additionally, Google has confirmed to the blog that when the service comes back online completely it will not only feature Google+ results exclusively. Google will continue featuring real-time results from a variety of online sources and not just their own service.
