The real-time search was an integral part of Google search from winter 2009 to summer 2011. The real-time search function provides live results from social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, or blogs. Through the caffeine update, SERPs became more current.
History and background
Google has routinely expanded its web content indexing capabilities. With the introduction of the real-time search, Google provided an option to surf the Internet in real time, especially social networks. This was made possible by the short message service Twitter through its own API, which Google was able to use to index tweets and integrate them into the SERPs. Real-time search results received their own timeline, as well as the ability to click hashtags or view geodata.
Today Bing provides a real-time tweet search with its vertical Bing search.[1]
The reasons why Google suspended real-time search they could be diverse. On the one hand, it is now feasible to search for tweets directly on the Twitter platform. Second, it is not of great relevance for Google when the results take into account other social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. With Google+, the search engine company has its own network, which it can promote by incorporation into the SERPs, for example with the Google OneBox.
Compatible Websites
Along with Twitter tweets, real-time search can also find entries from the portals Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, and Google Buzz, the forerunner of Google Plus, and display them on the SERPs. At the same time from these public sources, the results of the Yahoo! Answers, Quora or Jaiku.
Future
Due to the competition between Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks like Pinterest, it seems doubtful that Google is going to relaunch its real-time search. You probably have no interest in directing users to the 'contest' website. Technical alternatives will not be lacking, since once the infrastructure is created with the Caffeine update and since updates such as the freshness update, current content is preferred, it is conceivable that for current events, important messages from Facebook are also displayed in the SERPs as long as the Googlebot is allowed to index them.
Web Links
