Google Realtime Search & Twitter

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog regarding the Google Realtime search (a full 1 hour before the news broke on the BBC!!). But I was asked a question recently about why sometimes a tweet someone makes appears in the results, and othertimes it doesn’t.

No surprise to learn that Google “pick” which tweets to publish in realtime and which ones they ignore.

So what convinces Google to choose your tweet?

It appears to be based on popularity (as far as we can tell – since Google’s algorithm is in the vault next to the KFC recipe!). By this we mean that it not only depends on the number of followers you have on twitter, but ALSO the number of followers THEY have on twitter (and possible the number of followers they have…….) well you get the idea!

I am also convinced it is about the type of people THEY FOLLOW – i.e. are they following other people with thousands of followers who tweet about similar subjects to you. If they are, then why would they follow you, if your tweets were of a poor quality?

It also appears to be about the quality of your followers – if you have people who tweet alot about the subjects you also tweet about (with a # tag) who have hundreds or thousands of followers.

It appears that all this following and followers adds up in Googles mind as an “endorsement” to your tweets.

This makes sense as why would you follow someone you either had a) no real interest in or b) who was posting poor quality tweets that didn’t add value to your own knowledge on a particular subject.

I don’t know the “reason” twitter was originally created, however I do know that it has become a valuable resource of information and that it is far easier to keep your finger on the pulse regarding almost any particular subject.