SEO / Web Marketing Articles: Tweets on Google
Twitter Results Now Part of Google
Twitter’s tweets are now showing at the top of Google’s results. Though these results aren’t showing on all of Google’s data centers, they are showing on Google.ca. When someone does a search “Twitter marketing course” the top results are tweets on the subject. UPDATE: The Twitter results are showing mixed within the Google serps though usually top 10. Also, the format is not limited to 2 results, now has a slide bar for viewing of multiple results.
See below image for a glimpse.
How Are Tweets ranked?
The Twitter results are ranked based on their freshness, so newer tweets appear at the top. However, Google does factor in some relevancy into the results because fresher results aren’t being shown over the ones listed. One concern may be that this will encourage people to spam Twitter in order to maintain the freshest tweets, so that they can keep Google’s #1 spot. I noticed the 2 displayed links are both from major or reputable sites (CNN and a .org), this could be Google’s way of addressing my above concern.
What is the format of Google’s Twitter results?
First Google shows “Latest results…” which when clicked shows all the recent tweets using the searched keywords. The results seem purely based on freshness. Google gives this as a feed and gives the ability to “pause” or “resume” the feed. Next shown in a chat bubble is the actual tweet with any links shown using then meta-title tag. It also shows the URL of the site being tweeted about in grey. Under the bubble are the linked ID of the tweeter, a link to Twitter.com, and the age of the tweet.
What does this mean for SEO and Twitter?
This is big news for both SEO and Twitter. It means that Google is openly embracing Twitter. In order to be able to maintain the feeds of current tweets Google must be constantly indexing Twitter. This means that links posted via Twitter will get indexed much faster. So if you have new content you wish to get indexed fast, just post it on Twitter. The question is with the constant indexing of Twitter does it also mean that the links will be given authority status? If this is the case, Twitter links could be a basic must in the link building process of a web site. It is not clear how Google views the number of followers a tweeter has and whether it gives weight to this. I imagine it will play a role later if it doesn’t already. Realize that the Twitter results are only currently showing up for very few keywords and are not showing up on Google’s main index. However, expect that the terms will be broadened and that Google.com will be showing similar results within the next few months. Obviously Google sees the importance of Twitter and more SEOs will have to switch their focus to it as well. It also means that a lot more people will become aware of Twitter. Expect this to be as big for Twitter as the moment when Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to see who could get to a million followers first.
Any questions about tweets on Google or Google's relationship with Twitter, please feel free to contact me at 905-417-9470 or by email at allanp73@gmail.com