Google Confirms New Experiment With Twitter In Search Results

Google is finally making use of the new deal it signed with Twitter to put tweets into Google’s search results. The company today confirmed a “small experiment” that some are seeing.

Dan Martin from Razorfish shared a screenshot with us this morning showing one of the experiments where tweets are integrated in Google’s search results trending topics:

We asked Google about this, which confirmed it was a test:

As mentioned in Twitter’s earnings call back in January, we’ve partnered to bring their real-time content to Google Search. We’ve started some small experiments in mobile search, but we don’t have more to announce at this point.

Google and Twitter signed a deal in February giving greater access to Twitter’s data. Google was already crawling Twitter for data despite this deal, so tweets being in Google’s search results isn’t a new change. But the deal gave Google the ability to get even more information than it could crawl regularly. Our story, FAQ: How Twitter’s New Deal To Bring Tweets To Google Search Works, explains more.

Since the deal was signed, we’ve been waiting for the new uses to begin. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said last week to expect this in May. Now it’s happening, at least on a test basis.

Martin said he sees it happening on and off on his Android device for many trending topics right now, such as [maythe4thbewithyou], [Carly Fiorina], [Jimmy Greaves] and other searches. I personally cannot replicate this on any of my devices, but it would not surprise me if Google is now testing this and may roll it out any day.

Here are some addition screen shots:

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.