Google has many creations. When they kill one off, it doesn’t always stay dead.
According to Mashable, Google’s Realtime Search is soon coming back. And the new version will have information from Google+ and other social sources.
Until recently, the Realtime Search used to be Google’s system of streaming relevant information from Twitter, Facebook and other social media services in real time.
When a major event made the news, like Osama’s death, Google Search would begin showing tweets and Facebook updates from users who were talking about the trending item. It allowed Google’s search engine results to be more relevant during major events, in real time.
Like anything good, it didn’t last long.
Google halted Realtime Search results in July when it failed to reach an agreement with the folks at Twitter over continued access to data.
With no access to a steady stream of tweets, the service was rendered less useful.
“The value the product was providing was not enough,” Google Fellow Amit Singhal said about the decision to turn off the feature during a search panel in Mountain View, California.
When Singhal was asked about Realtime Search’s return, he responded by saying that Google’s Search team is “actively working” on resurrecting the service. He also said that the team was tinkering around with adding data from Google+ and other sources. It appears that Google no longer thinks they need Twitter data to provide a useful real-time search engine.
Danny Sullivan, the moderator of the panel and Search Engine Land editor in chief, asked the panel why the Google+ stream doesn’t have its own search engine. A search engine is one of Google+’s most requested features.
“We are on it,” Singhal responded.
