Google had recently implemented results from Twitter on it's search engine. The real-time updates or tweets provide users with relevant information from blogs and elsewhere posted on Twitter. Search engines such as Bing and Cuil also incorporate real-time search results for their users. Apparently Google had to alter it's page ranking algorithm to accommodate it's real-time results. So how does Google decide which tweets get priority over others?

Amit Singhal, a Google fellow, says that Google's algorithm aims to make out 'reputed followers' amongst Twitter users. Amit led the development on real-time search at Google. In an interview with MIT's Technology Review, Amit says;

"You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers," his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widel. It is "definitely, definitely" more than a popularity contest"

However such tricks from reputed followers isn't the only part of Google's algorithm to rank tweets. Google seems to have ways to keep spam at bay while making out the relevant tweets from commonly used terms. Google also plans to make it's real-time results more relevant by adding geo-tagging data. That's something that could prove to be useful in the smartphones sector.