As soon as Google+ has been launched, something unexpected happened at the same time. Google shut down the realtime search. Having the Google realtime home page still active was a good signal to hope Google temporary shut down the service.
However, as now the home page redirects on Google Home page, I guess the story can be considered concluded.
Google Realtime was mainly fed by Twitter (all right Facebook stuff sometimes was used to appears as well), and this is now clear why Google+ launch has been postponed for some while. Google was expecting their agreement with Twitter to expire because – as they say on they help pages – “Our vision is to have Realtime Search include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.”
So no more pain, no more worries to see your latest joke to appear in Google Realtime (assuming your joke was so good to be retweeted across the net in a matter of seconds).
The real problem is that we can now in theory miss precious information like Osama Bill Laden death or two Saturdays ago missed tragedy on the A22 (Not sure about the motorway) or last week emergency landing of a Ryanair flight in Rome.
What’s happened when Google Realtime search has been shut down?
After the shut down, some experiments have been done to understand the importance of Twitter integration in Big G and how these results may have contributed to reach the critical mass while favouring the indexation process.
The results are depressing for certain aspect if we consider that a brand new page written by a well-known author took between 6-8 hours for being properly indexed.
This is not affecting the majority of SEOs and Social Media marketers in most of the circumstances, but the limit is somewhat unbridgeable and I’m anxious to see the direction Google is taking on this side, where they have failed a few times (Orkut and Buzz just to mention two flops).
What’s next?
Well, it’s pretty obvious that Google will come back sooner or later with the Realtime Search integrating Google+ streamline. The only consideration is when.
At the moment, there are no confirmation from this, so we have to wait and see.