• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 9, 2015

Google has access to every real-time Twitter tweet, but more than 90% are not indexed, according to a study. The company gained access to the Twitter data through a deal announced earlier this year.

The Stone Temple Consulting analysis saw a 466% rise in indexed tweets indexed within the first seven days from February to June. Just 0.6% of tweets were indexed in February, and in June that number rose to 3.4%. While these increases are promising, there are still more than 90% of Tweets that aren’t indexed.

The Google-Twitter deal initially looked like a good way for brands to find another social-search outlet to get content in front of consumers, but the slow-moving implementation might put a wrench in any immediate plans.

Finding information on trending topics like Comic Con 2015, which begins this weekend in San Diego, seems just about impossible. Searches require you to jump through hoops such as typing "#comiccon twitter" into the search box.

Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting founder, doesn't see anything revolutionary about the deal yet, and it may be a bit premature for brands to consumer "tripling down on their Twitter presence based on this deal," but that does not mean Google won’t do something far more substantial with Twitter in the future."

While the study shows more than four times as many tweets are now indexed within seven days compared with February, Enge said it is true that tweets will only show high in search engine result pages for a select group of queries.

Enge said the best chance to have a tweet actually rank, provided it gets indexed, for now seem related to either Newsjacking, having a tweet that is about a current trending news item, topic, or hashtag; or long tail terms, which means having a tweet that contains a fairly unique phrase for which people search.

Aaron Goldman, CMO at 4C Insights, thinks the agreement's a big deal based on commercial intent. "People use Google to find stuff to do, places to go, and things to buy," he said. "Sometimes people use Twitter for these same reasons, too, but not as often as Google. Twitter is not the first place to go when I want to buy something. Twitter is more about news and real-time events. Twitter is more passive. Google is more active. For brands investing in their presence on Twitter, having tweets indexed by Google gives more chances to get discovered by active consumers in buy-mode."