Facebook has a gargantuan user base, bordering on 1.5 billion, so it isn’t hard to see why so many marketers and advertisers focus their efforts and budgets on the platform. For my money, however, Twitter is the more effective tool for business purposes, especially in the B2B space. New developments are continually improving the social network’s standing as a tool for reaching and connecting with targeted audiences.

Earlier this summer, Google and Twitter announced a partnership that would entail tweets being displayed in search results on the leading engine. After experimenting for a few months, the new feature officially went live across desktop and mobile globally this week, so Google users will occasionally see some different things in their searches.

As a test, we performed a Google search for the query “google twitter tweets in search,” and fittingly, a pair of tweets were the first thing to display. The screenshot below gives you an idea of how these are being incorporated into results.

There are a few things worth noting here:

• The tweet results display at the very top of the first page, ahead of news and image results. That’s premium placement. There’s also an arrow you can click to scroll through more tweets relating to the search in a carousel format.
• You will also notice that in the second section, “In the news,” another tweet shows up in text form with a link back to Twitter, so there are multiple ways that Twitter content can pop up in a search.
• As usual, Google has been mostly mum about the algorithm that dictates which tweets might display for a particular search, saying only that “the relevancy and ranking behind these Twitter results will continue to evolve and improve as the process matures.” One thing that did strike me as I perused some tweets in search results is that having a large or well established account doesn’t appear to be a prerequisite for getting displayed; I saw tweets from accounts with follower totals ranging from under 100 to several thousand.

The addition of this functionality is a big development for both companies, especially Twitter, which has long grappled with questions about profitability in spite of its tremendous adoption. Getting this kind of prominent placement in Google searches will obviously lead to much more visibility for the 140-character social network. And of course, seeing this kind of partnership take place only fuels the speculation that Google will eventually acquire Twitter, especially now that they’ve essentially given up on Google Plus.

If your company has been hesitant to dive into Twitter, now is the time because the arrow is definitely pointing up. At Top Source, we offer a wide range of social media services and consider Twitter to among our strongest areas. If you’d like to learn more about how your company can leverage the growing platform, contact us today.