A recently-inked agreement will change the way most people see search engine results. From now on, Google will have access to the Twitter “firehose,” or the endless stream of data that comes from the site’s hundreds of millions of users. At some point this year, Tweets will be visible in Google’s search results pages.
Why did these Internet giants decide to team up? Google’s social media platform, Google+, has not dominated the Internet as they had hoped, and they can now get access to a whole other world of real-time content. Twitter, who has seen its share of the Internet diminish with the rising popularity of social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, needs this deal to reach a wider audience. The company admits that the number of logged out or unregistered users that visit the site every month is higher than the number of active users, and this partnership is an attempt to monetize them.
Although this is big news in the SEO world, it is not exactly unprecedented; the two companies had a similar deal about five years ago, but nothing every materialized. This time, the Internet giants seem a bit more serious. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said in a quarterly earnings report that tweets will start appearing in Google’s search results within the next several months.
The details on how this will roll out are not entirely clear, but there is one big takeaway for your agency. If you haven’t added Twitter into your agency’s social media strategy, you should take the time to make an account and get started. At this point, no one knows how much this will affect small businesses, but it could favor those who make use of Twitter. Current customers and prospective clients should be able the see that you’re plugged in and ready to engage with them on social media.
Interesting links about insurance, community events, or updates about the agency are all things that can help you reach your audience. In this day and age, if you don’t adapt, you can get left behind. If you’re completely overwhelmed by Twitter, don’t worry. It’s fairly easy once you get the hang of it, and you’ll be sharing useful content with your customers in no time!