Search Realtime with Google and Twitter Together
What do you do if you want to find up-to-the-minute information? Twitter is known for instantaneity and Google for relevance. How about mixing best of both the worlds? How about being the first one to receive authorized and updated breaking news?
Back in 2009, Google made a deal with Twitter where they have access to all the public tweets. And these updated tweets appeared before the results related to your search query. Google then called it realtime search. The deal sounded promising and later Google released specialized site google.com/realtime for people looking for latest and fresh information. However, they closed this feature within a year with the launch of Google+ while trying to figure out ways to incorporate and promote G+ activities.
Now, until Google comes up with real time G+ integrated results, we have found out few worthy alternatives to get latest results by mixing Twitter search in Google:
1. HashPlug (Chrome Extension)
Developed by an India based startup, HashPlug seamlessly integrates Twitter realtime search results into Google search results page. The design placement is unobtrusive and user friendly but pushes knowledge graph to the bottom of the page (if present).
Results from Twitter search are slightly delayed and space is left as it is if there are no real time updates or no results from twitter. Also you can also favorite, reply or retweet from the Google search page itself. Unfortunately, it is available only for Chrome.
In conclusion, this handy extension comes to real use for time limited or breaking news searches. Get it from here.
2. Twootles
Twootles is an old style mashup site which displays real time twitter results simultaneously with Google results in the sidebar. It fails in aesthetics and functionality features of HashPlug but scores big in compatibility. Since it is a website, you can use it everywhere including mobiles. Try it here.
3. Heapr
This webapp lets you search Google, Twitter, Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia at the same time. The search mashup is badly designed but lets you separate results by sites, images and videos. Also, you must have Chrome or Firefox to use this app as it does not work on mobile or IE. Try out here.
Tell us in comments if you know any such other services or which among the listed ones you would love to use?
