Google over-reliant on Twitter

[BedSupperclub]

Hi,

I just noticed that google is giving more weight to Twitter (the backlinks you may get from twitter) since Panda. So if your site gets tons of tweets you're likely to rank.

But Twitter is a geeky platform that doesn't give the real picture. Facebook's likes are much closer to it than tweets.

I heard Google doesn't have access to those likes, but that doesn't mean they should over-rely on twitter...

(If only someone could kill Panda!)

:(

[goodroi]

Hi BedSupperClub,

I have noticed that Google is paying attention to url mentions in Twitter also. My analysis showed that Twitter was just a small part of a very big Google algorithm that looks at many different other elements.

You mention that Twitter is a geeky platform that doesn't give the real picture. According to Forbes, In early 2011 Twitter has about 200 million accounts & growing. Those accounts were generating 95 million tweets a day in December 2009. [blogs.forbes.com...]

When you are talking about hundreds of millions accounts and messages, I think it is safe to say Twitter is relatively mainstream. Especially when many of the top Twitter accounts belong to sports & movie celebrities. I don't think those celebrities are active on Twitter for the geeks.

Certain demographics of Twitter's user base may be skewed from the "real world" but there is still value in paying attention to Twitter signals. Google is doing what every webmaster should do. Google is evolving and seeking out new opportunities.

For over 10 years Google has used backlinks as a quality signal. It was simple and easy for webmasters to figure this out and abuse it. Now Google is augmenting the heavily manipulated backlink signal with new data that Google has gained by monitoring the 200 million Twitter accounts. Backlinks are so heavily abused there is a very large multi million dollar industry for selling paid links. I am not saying Twitter is 100% clean but it is much less abused than backlinks.

Using more data sources helps Google provide more current and fresh results while also giving them another quality signal to look at that hasn't been manipulated for over 10 years. I am curious why someone would think Google should ignore the 95 million daily messages being posted by 200 million users on Twitter.

[rlange]

BedSupperclub wrote:
But Twitter is a geeky platform [...]

I know it's a small point, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. The most followed accounts on Twitter are celebrities (actors, singers, athletes, etc.).

--
Ryan

[BedSupperclub]

@Goodroi and @rlange: Twitter still can't compare with Facebook


But I guess am just bitter because am seeing my competitors outranking me mostly thanks to twitter while I kick them any day with Facebook

[Planet13]

There is a fairly recent video by Matt Cutts (December 2010) regarding twitter and facebook links:

[youtube.com...]

He also suggests that anyone who is interested in how much value google puts on twitter and facebook should read an article posted by Danny Sullivan:

[searchengineland.com...]

[Seo_Mike]

"But Twitter is a geeky platform that doesn't give the real picture. Facebook's likes are much closer to it than tweets."

Sounds like your personal opinion on the subject, in reality though, people lie; number's don't.

[Pjman]

In my experience twitter is definitely not representative of the real webosphere. I remember something on tech crunch citing that only 20 percent of twitter accounts are active. I have to concur. I find little value in the users I attract to my site via twitter. I think they are mostly zombies.

[tedster]

Twitter spam accounts are easier to filter out than spammy backlinks in general. It's very hard to create a huge network of spam profiles that are naturally integrated into the larger Twitter community, the way a real account would be. Spam accounts do not engage real accounts very well, and almost never get return engagement from them, except to out them publicly as spambots.

Any kind of large scale analysis would show these patterns quite dramatically, and both Twitter and Google are doing that kind of work.

[walkman]

Planet13, that's so last year. Truth is we don't know what they use and how much they rely on it. There have been changes even between Pandas, drastic ones.

[learnseo81]

Does this mean that If nobody is tweeting about a site or any of its topics, It is a shallow site? Doesn't make any sense.

I think social signals are a part of google algo but very small percentage...

[martinibuster]

Does this mean that If nobody is tweeting about a site or any of its topics, It is a shallow site?

Probably not. The lack of tweets might not count against a site. But if site X is the recipient citations from a wide variety of tweets then it's possible/feasible/reasonable to take that as a positive signal about the content on site X.

[micklearn]

Too tired to search for a small study that I read about a few days ago that dealt with the usage of social media sites by small businesses. If I'm recalling correctly, Facebook was close to 50%, Linkedin was 7%, and Twitter was around 3%.

There's another article out there somewhere that mentioned that a low percentage of Twitter users produce the most tweets, by a very large margin.

Almost all of the important people/sites that I follow in my industry on Twitter do nothing more than link to their own content.

I do appreciate that on some days, but I guess I was hoping for something more when I signed up on there. A lot of what I'm exposed to on Twitter just seems to be done in an automated fashion.

[tedster]

and Twitter was around 3%

That means many small businesses still have a chance to be an early adopter.

A lot of what I'm exposed to on Twitter just seems to be done in an automated fashion.

It's all in who you follow.

[internetheaven]

I'm a bit lost ... when did Google start treating links on Twitter as backlinks?

I see them in WMT but I see all the nofollow and some javascript links in WMT too. Never thought they counted toward ranking.

They help with getting indexed faster for sure. But not ranking as far as I can see.