Google's Twitter News Display - a useless feature that obstructs our web search

[backdraft7]

Since about September 1st 2010, I have noticed some extreme changes in our traffic and sales patterns. We've been tossing around different ideas including the possibility that Google is now throttling traffic to sites [webmasterworld.com ].

I believe the problem is much simpler; The new "News for (keyword" display under "Web" search now takes up the hot spots at the top of the page. What useful news does it display? Tweets! Yeah, that's right, nothing but Twitter Tweets. Is Google getting ready to buy Twitter?

The result is that our traffic for hot single word keywords is dropping like a rock since we are now beyond the fold while tweets (most unrelated to our search) scroll across the hot real estate in the top 5 or 6 positions.

I suggest that Google move this "News for (keyword)" or "Latest results for (keyword)" display to the "News" area and stop cluttering the web search with social site garbage.

[tedster]

I'm not sure of the value of that scrolling social media box anymore - not for anyone. I just checked some breaking news (twitter hack [webmasterworld.com]) and regular Google results have information that's only 3 minutes old.

[backdraft7]

I'm not exactly sure what triggers the "Latest news" scrolling twitter display...I tried several single word key phrases and found two that make it appear. Unfortunately one is my main keyword. It doesn't appear for every search.

Anyone know when that scroll box first appeared in Google? or what's the idea behind it? Tedster - do you know?

[tedster]

We're coming up on the one year anniversary:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[futureX]

Personally I don't find any value in tweets being returned as news results. There's not much useful information that can be put into such a small post and the percentage of absolute useless posts to actual informative posts is probably about 5 million to 1.

[backdraft7]

Tedster - Thanks, I just saw that it was about 9 months ago..funny it hasn't affected me until it recently appeared on one of my main keyword searches.

futureX - I have a problem with it when it pushes all the web results down 5 or 6 positions. It's completely useless.

[bwnbwn]

backdraft7 it has effected a good many of us for a long time now and I don't see an end in sight. Welcome to the new Google social media whatever.

[backdraft7]

Today the twitter news scroller is gone from the search mentioned above...more changes afoot I see. There is no positive effect though, perhaps it needs to propagate.