Twitter has reached an agreement with Google to allow the social network's 140-character updates to become more searchable on the Internet, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Within the first half of 2015, tweets will become visible in the search results of Google as soon as they have been posted. This is made possible because of the agreement that gave Google access to the firehose of Twitter, which is the data stream generated by the 284 million users of the social network.
Previously, Google had to crawl the website of Twitter for information, which did not lead to the favorable search results that Twitter hoped for.
Google and Twitter engineers are currently developing the arrangement, which the two companies already previous had in the years 2009 to 2011. The agreement was not renewed as former Twitter COO Ali Rowghani wanted to have more control over the content on the website.
The agreement with Google shows the progress made by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in allowing more non-users to see the tweets posted on the website, which would lead to higher advertising revenue due to a wider audience. As the growth of the user base of Twitter slows, the company is now aiming to attract more people to the website.
Twitter also provides data to the Bing search engine of Microsoft and that of Yahoo!, and has also announced agreements earlier this week to show advertising in the mobile app of Flipboard and Yahoo! Japan.
According to JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth, the renewed partnership between Twitter and Google is beneficial to both companies, as it provides Twitter with more opportunities to convert and monetize users that are logged out of the network. Anmuth also said that with tweets showing up in Google search results, the frequency at which users access their accounts on Twitter to check the website will increase.
Google, on the other hand, will have enhanced search results, with the search engine gaining access to wider content due to being able to look up tweets as they are sent out in real time.
According to Bloomberg's sources, the agreement between Twitter and Google does not involve advertising revenue. This would suggest that Twitter will instead be receiving data-licensing revenue for the agreement.
Twitter CFO Anthony Noto previously said back in November of last year that the company was looking to make it easier to find tweets using search engines. The agreement with Google seems to be a product of that plan.
