Google's real-time search to replace Twitter with Google+

Google has temporarily disabled its real-time search functionality while it figures out a way to replace an expired Twitter deal with content from Google+.

In a statement on Monday, the search giant said the arrangement with Twitter, which saw relevant posts from the micro-blogging platform feed into the Realtime section of Google's search results page, had run out on Saturday.

"Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2," the statement read. "While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that's publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google."

"While the real-time search [capability] has been temporarily disabled, Google is looking to explore how to incorporate Google+" into the service, a company spokeswoman told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.

Google+, launched a week ago in private beta, is the company's latest attempt to create a viable social network to rival Facebook. As it is easier to segment private and public posts on Google+ than it is on Facebook, the new service also has potential to rival the functionality of Twitter.