Google’s Realtime search was the definition of search engine optimization (SEO) until July when it had to shut down because of failing to have an agreement with Twitter. The disagreement has something to do with Twitter’s stream of messages called tweets. After two years of valuable partnership, the contract between Google and Twitter expired on July 2, 2011.

The search giant’s Realtime search enabling the users to get the most recent and relevant information during major world events such as the Royal Wedding and Osama Bin Laden’s death and news about almost anything under the sun through updates from Facebook and tweets from Twitter. With Google’s Realtime search, when a topic is typed on the search box, updates and tweets are displayed immediately.

A member of the Google Policy Fellowship, Amit Singhal, answered questions about the shutting down of Realtime in a search panel in Mountain View, California. He said that Google is actively working on bringing back Realtime search using Google+.

Google said it is still open for working with Twitter but it does not prioritize wooing Twitter. Why would they when they have their own in-house micro-blogging? From an interview, Google says that the information on tweets will still be available and discoverable in Google even if they do not have the access to the special feed from Twitter because of the crawler system.

One of the features of Google+ includes the unique Google Circle, which gives users the ability to share content comfortably to specified groups of people or “circles”. The in-house micro-blogging feature will then be used as Google’s main source along with other social sites for the Realtime search of data.

Google+ could also affect a business website’s SEO since how it is found on Google’s search engine is affected by allowing the users that are logged in to their accounts to click the +1 button, which is similar to Facebook’s “like” button, on links that they find useful. The +1 buttons will be important in SEO because it will be a way to determine the value of websites. These +1 buttons will not only affect the business’s websites but also affect the way search engine optimizers look at site optimization aspects such as the factors that motivate users to share the contents of a site and what makes them comfortable in sharing stories in their Circle. However, users who are not logged in will see different results from those who are logged in.

Google’s new Realtime search capability will be tested when a major world event happens. And also when it is available to anyone who wishes to try and experience Google+. Right now, Google+ is still in the trial period and is only available to a limited number of users.

Google+ will surely change some aspects of SEO especially with Google, which is one of the major search engines today. Will Google’s Realtime be the same using Google+ in place of Twitter? On the other hand, Google already admitted that Facebook was not very effective as a real-time news source. Considering that it resembles Facebook, there are doubts that it will be better than the social networking site. Nevertheless, Google+ is an ongoing project so web masters and internet users have so much to look forward to.