For those Twitterites out there, yesterday was a very good day. Twitter announced two (count ’em) deals, one with Microsoft to have Tweets appear on Bing’s results. The second one was roughly similar with Google.
What does it all mean?
To me it means the following…
If you think tweetspam was bad before, watch out now…it’s gonna get worse. Think tweeting listings was bad before? grin
The big winner is Twitter. Seriously. It is like if the iPhone cut deals simultaneously with AT&T and Verizon instead of just At&T.
From here I am interested in your thoughts. What do you think it means. Please comment and discuss.
Missy Caulk says:
Yes I think it will cause more folks to spam twitter. So lists will be more important to those of use who like being there. It will help filter out the spam from those that we don’t care about.
Now, that sounds bad, but you know what I mean.
The good part is it will probably help in the SERPS for key words in real time data.
October 22, 2009 — 8:23 am
Benjamin Ficker says:
I guess this means I have to start doing something with my Twitter account… Crap.
October 22, 2009 — 10:15 am
Benjamin Ficker says:
Eric, What does this mean for SEO juice from tweets? Will bit.ly links (or any other shortener) pass any juice from the tweets that rank well?
October 22, 2009 — 10:19 am
Al Lorenz says:
So, I better find that post from Ryan again on setting up a twitter account for each new listing…
It might be time to run some experiments.
October 22, 2009 — 10:22 am
Eric Blackwell says:
@Missy- yes. I do know what you mean 😉 As far as what this means for SERPS, we really don’t know yet. Now that they have the rights to it, how are they going to incorporate it? Remember that Google and Bing ONLY make money when folks click on the PPC listings. That is the be all and end all. That’s how they get paid (grin) Will be interesting to see how they actually blend it into their pages.
@Benjamin- Good question. I do not worry about links on Twitter passing juice much at all. I assume that they have none. I actually tweet very little and it usually is only when I have found something of specific interest or when I have posted something on one of my blogs that I think is of REAL value to those that follow.
October 22, 2009 — 10:50 am
Ivan says:
I can’t imagine if how will tweeter looks like. Maybe it will be the perfect place for the spammers to make their living.
October 22, 2009 — 12:27 pm
Chris the Implementer says:
Eric
This definitely means that tweets will benefit from being more focused and purposeful. Serious twittererers will quickly recognize that keywords will be vital in the “New World of Twitter” [LMAO – new world of twitter!? listen to me!]
Chris Brown
October 22, 2009 — 1:56 pm
James Boyer says:
What value is there in indexing twitter stuff on Google and Bing?? what I see on Twitter is 99% junk.
October 23, 2009 — 4:26 pm
Mark Madsen says:
I just started using a new Firefox plugin that I heard about this week on GeekEstate: http://www.geekestateblog.com/why-webmynd-com-kills-googles-twitter-announcement/
I’ve been using whostalkin.com for a while to manage my real-time social search, but webmynd.com is another useful tool that integrates directly with the SERPs.
With regards to using twitter for a search engine marketing strategy, I’ve been managing a series of niche Twitter accts for a few months. Different data that I personally feed, which all have very specific target audiences.
I can’t really say that there is a direct result in closed transaction from my Twitter activity, but I have seen an increase in traffic and exposure for my various web projects.
Am I generating targeted traffic? Not sure yet. However, I use Twitter, Tumblr, FriendFeed, Mybloglog, Posterous… as a simple way of leaving breadcrumbs that lead back to my blogs.
I’m sure that advanced social media marketers have the tools and systems to actually analyze ROI for each of their online applications, but I’m not that motivated to figure out those specific details quite yet.
Since I already spend an hour or two a day in Google Reader, I may as well take a few extra minutes to share some valuable bits of info on the web.
Worse case, I’m just documenting my evolution. Best case, I might encourage a good discussion that could lead to a profitable business relationship.
As far as Twitter spam goes – I believe that people are figuring out how to ignore the noise faster than the spammers can design a lasting business model.
October 24, 2009 — 11:04 am
Mark Madsen says:
Eric –
How do you think Google will measure the authority of each Tweet in order to give the info proper placement? If the SERPs just show the most recent Twitter activity that includes certain key words, then I imagine the spammers will simply write programs that just auto feed noise into Twitter.
October 24, 2009 — 11:38 am
Joe says:
“The big winner is Twitter. Seriously.”
Yup, agreed. Twitter feeds have been indexed in other mediums already, so Google’s announcement is merely a bowing down to the new comer who is threatening their supremacy.
October 24, 2009 — 6:40 pm
Robert Worthington says:
is there a possible way to go without browsing google and seeing the tweets
October 25, 2009 — 9:06 am
Malok says:
Twitter is definitely the big winner. And I agree: Twitter spam is going to be ramped up in a BIG way. Given the very nature of Twitter (timing is a big component of it), it will BE very hard to weed out the good tweets from the bad ones and get it done in a timely fashion.
I can see auto-tweetbots, having conversations on 100,000 fake accounts following one another, all tweeting with “spun” content amongst themselves getting developed.
Anyway, here’s how bing is taking first crack at trying to sift through “relevant” Tweets:
http://www.bing.com/twitter
October 25, 2009 — 7:47 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
@Mark- Hey buddy…interesting plugin. Had not seen it. About how G will devise an algo…there is a group of us watching, testing and researching that. Interesting thing is, Google is probably doing quite a bit of testing right now to figure out how to get relevance without spam…
Good luck to them doing that with twitter, but never bet against the boys and girls on the Google campus. 😉 They are amazing at testing and filtering (famous for it- have you seen their documented efforts to save money and the testing of the power consumption of their servers? It was a thing of beauty.It gives great insight into how they think organizationally) and in my view, Bldg 43 does a much better job than Bing at filtering spam. I think we are simply going to be in wait and see mode for a while, but it will be interesting to see IMO.
@Joe and Malok – Agreed.
October 26, 2009 — 4:12 am
Mike Dammann says:
They are already training people in overseas sweatshops to switch from grey hat link building to twitter growing.
But still, I think we will see a lot of usage of their new “report spam” option and overall quality should not suffer too much.
Afterall, twitter is mostly spam anyways, it will just ensure that tweet spammers will take their time and learn how to spell better, make more sense, respect the audience and be a little more creative.
Hopefully.
October 26, 2009 — 4:45 am