Twitter Lays Down for Google

Interesting twitter development. Looking forward to follow-up posts if @ev or @mattcutts ever write you back.

Another beautiful example of the dilemma that Google now has on this whole mess of nofollow links. They cannot preserve the integrity of the PageRank system since it has no logical integrity. They’re like the Dutch boy who tried to prevent the dam from leaking by sticking his thumb in the hole. It’s the defence of the indefensible.

Damn Dave could have kept this one on the DL! Oh once more we must bow to the mighty Google. LOL

I, for one, embrace our evil overlords friendly neighborhood search engine. But seriously, the logic in why Twitter/Google pulled the trigger is flawed. IMHO it also exposes how antiquated PageRank has become (eloquent comment from bwelford up there). Bad for me as an SEO to admit that PageRank is wonky, but there it is.

Yeah, you know they had this no “handjobs” policy for so long but it seems to me it’s 6 one way and a half dozen the other to have other people do your “handjobs” for you. Between this kind of “suggested” nofollowing and the “rat a link seller out” initiatives they have been implementing it’s just indicative that they have reached the limitations of what they can accomplish algorithmically wise in terms of SERP quality. Unfortunately their KGB approach is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and this is a prime example. Rae is totally right, a Twitter page is content, if it has inbound links it’s because people like that content, and the author deserves all the link juice they have earned.

I knew about the no follow on the web link but I am surprised they did it on the profile as well. I think we need to Get Satisfaction

rae.. not to disagree with you…
here’s a perspective.. remember your twitter study you did (bbgeeks me thinks)..

how does this circumstance affect the tactics used in that study?

=)

I’m guessing the “guidelines” Google lays down with an iron fist will be what ultimately gets attention from anti-trust organizations. Telling people how to run their website, “or else we won’t give you traffic,” is pretty much the same as telling retailers how to use their shelf space, “or else you can’t sell (Microsoft/Nintendo).”

I agree with all MOST of your comments, however, maybe there’s a good reason for it? maybe there are things you aren’t aware of? maybe google aren’t the most evil thing on the planet.

To say Google and its page rank scoring system is flawed and terrible is something I’d like to see justified – logically. I hate the fact that Google are the search monopoly, but we can’t deny the fact that when you use their service it generally works.

I totally agree.

Since twitter actually has a very decent way to catch spammers (they won’t get many followers anyhow), I don’t see why google should not count these followers as votes. It’s similar to wikipedia (and wikiquote etc.) using no-follow on all external links. It’s just not fair. It hoards their pagerank and does not reward quality sites that get links from there for a reason.
I do think twitter AND wikipedia really need to figure out a way to reward actual users and real content.

Google is a “miserable failure” — just Google it and you’ll see! ;D

They’ve been blacklisting for years — this is nothing new.

People who know what they’re doing should know better than to pay attention to Google results: The whole bogus system will probably come down like a house of cards sometime soon.

If you own shares in GOOG, now might be a good time to cash out.

:) nmw

It’s an interesting post, but begs the question that is you are posting information on Twitter (or anywhere else for that matter) for the ultimate aim of getting backlinks to your site, then is this not spam?

I don’t use Twitter, because I’ve never seen the point (maybe I’m too old!) but I can see that as with any Internet vehicle that allows you to add links, it is open to abuse from spammers.

If the build-up of your content etc. on Twitter was for the purpose of gaining PR through to your own site, then is it not spam? And if that was not the purpose, then surely you wouldn’t be so wound up about it.

Now, I confess I have added my own website link to this post so that it’s another backlink that may get picked up by Google, and thank you very much. But the point is, if you decided to ad no-follows to your site, then I shouldn’t get upset about it, because I wanted to make the post to give my 10 pence worth – not for increased site popularity!

>>>but you’re probably the type that will simply believe if when you hear from Matt Cutts that writing content for the sole purpose to gain links is not spam.

Don’t make assumptions! Just because Matt Cutts says sometthing, it doesn’t make it gospel fact. Any discussion involving the question of spam, and whether content is spam, or indeed whether spam is content, can get into grey areas and you can start to chase your tail.

However, I will say this. I come from an Internet “purist” background, which is to say that the Internet was built as a way of providing easy mechanisms to get information to many people quickly. The fact is that the Internet was then quickly seized upon by the marketing world and turned into a massive commercial asset. I suppose there is an irony to the fact that Google is constantly trying to identify spam (which is ultimately the guff spewed out by organisations in their incessent battle to “be on top”) in an effort to ensure its own commercial future remains intact. The evil forces of capitalism have dragged me into website marketing and optimisation etc., but I no longer spend all my time in it. I have previously worked (quite successfully, though I say so myself!) purely on Internet marketing quite intensively. Now that I don’t spend 80% of my days reading posts and discussions by Matt, Danny Sullivan et al, and the rest thinking of something useful to say, I am able to see, as the saying goes, the wood for the trees.

The wood in this case is the spam. IM very HO there is a hell of a lot more spam out there than even Google gives credit to, and based on this very simple premise:

If there were no commercial/financial gain to be had from the Internet, would the content be there?

In so many cases the answer would be ‘no’.

Content is created for the sake of creating content/link bait.

Now, I know your original point was asking why the link is no longer followed from Twitter to Google, and the answer is that Google is protecting its own commercial future. If it believes there are too many Twitter links that are spam links, then it clearly will, has, and has every right to, drop the links. So, I’ll say again: If you’ve created content to build a reputation to get passed on to your own site, then you’ve been spamming. Haven’t you?

I had no idea twitter links were do-follow. Now that they aren’t, I almost feel robbed. I don’t twitter a lot, but when I do, aww man! In all seriousness, I love the point you made. You shouldn’t blindside people who really enjoy the service, and you should never deny your customers in favor of a big company. Honest business or no business!

Benny P says:
The evil forces of capitalism have dragged me into website marketing and optimisation etc.
DARN YOU CAPITALISM! You and your allowance of the common man building businesses and a future for themselves in creative methods! And darn you too, modern spelling! I need not your fancy “z”s! (optimization? it has a “z” in it. Unless you’re European. I think they use an ’s.’ Somebody google that shi*)

Benny P also says:
Don’t make assumptions!
Right. Never assume anything. I should never assume that fire is hot. Perhaps the blue part is actually the coolest part. Blue is cool, right? I love how at the end of your ‘no assuming’ rant, you says this:
If you’ve created content to build a reputation to get passed on to your own site, then you’ve been spamming. Haven’t you? (and yes, I used an ’s’ in ’say’ on purpose. To be cute. ^_^)

Seriously though, creating content…to build reputation…to get passed onto your [personal brand]. This is teh spamming? What the [fudge]? You know how authors, they write books? And they uh, they expect their best books to make people like them. And uh, if people like them, they make moneys. So uh…authors are spammers. So are television producers and movie actors and the evil converse shoe company! Their comfortable and stylish tennis shoes have been spamming our feet for years!

>>>So you’ll have to excuse me for saying, where the hell do you get off preaching “internet purism” buddy?

Calm down dear!

I don’t believe it’s sensible to make a direct analogy between magazines (or books) and the Internet. The ability for anyone to be able to add there own information the web is what makes it unique and makes it open to the abuse of spammers.

I also didn’t ay that I was a purist (but perhaps once was!) and certainly didn’t want to give the impression that I was preaching, because I most certainly wasn’t. Your anger at the addition of the no-follow to Google is what prompted mbe to respond. You acknowledge that your blog exists for “some type of commercial/financial/branding” for you. Would you not protect whatever that asset was if you needed to?

Google makes it decisions on algorithm changes in an attempt to consistently serve up the most relevant information to its users. If it doesn’t then users will go elsewhere. About three years ago I would often do a search on Google, get rubbish results and then do the same search on Yahoo! to get the information I needed. This tended to be in the days when Google went through its eratic “dances”. Fortunately for Google they are now much more consistent. But I digress. The point is that Google will alter its results/algorithm to maintain these good results. These changes filter through to website owners who are all too aware of the importance of Google in getting and maintaining visitor numbers. The move by Twitter to add a Nofollow to its bio links is most likely because of this. They are simply protecting their presence in Google and thereby protecting their business asset. If you knew that your own financial/branding asset was at risk within Google for a particular reason, and that you could protect it by making an alteration to your site, even at the expense of some of your users, then no doubt you would do it.

As 3eps so rightly says, competitive advantage and market forces will ultimately provide a suitable balance to the situation should it so demand it.

>>>Oh and by the way, under your reasoning, your site is spam too. The site wouldn’t exist if it weren’t selling software.

Not wanting to be argumentative for the sake of it, but there is a fundamental difference, in that the business would still exist and be selling software if the Internet did not exist. The website is just another way of letting people know of its existence. That gives a distinct separation from websites that exist because of the Internet.

>>>Additionally, before you come in here on the mountain high of ideals, you have crappy directory links, footer links on unrelated sites and link exchanges with sites about rabbits.

The point of putting in the phrase “Internet purist” was simply to illustrate the evolution of the Internet from a research tool to an advertising machine, not to provide a mountain of high ideals on which to sit.

As for the “crappy directory link”, one cannot control who is going to link to your site; that’s the basis on which the Internet is built. The “footer link on the unrelated sites” is not an unrelated site. It is a site that we developed, and the footer just states who developed the site. The fact that there is a link from there to our site is the Internet in its purist form – it provides a link to further relevant resources, i.e. more information about the company that developed the site.

And as for the link exchange with rabbit sites, again this is a site that we developed. there is again a link on that site to us to state that we developed it, and we have a link from ours to that site to tell the search engines of its existence.

If you were an Internet purist then I would understand your annoyance at Twitter adding a nofollow to their links, because this does go against the underlying basis of how the Internet was designed to work, but since you’re not you can’t really complain.

And yes Sneakyheathen, we do spell optimisation with an ’s’ over here.

Mmmm. Comparing the situation to religion is, as you say, extreme! I think the term ‘purist’ and its various derivatives thereof are clouding the issue. I used the term simply to separate the time when the Internet and content existed soley for the purpose of providing information, to where it is now which is a big commercial machine where information is often provided simply to make money, and therein lies the motivation for generating content just for the sake of it. What if spam is not defined as rubbish content, but as the motivation behind creating the content? Then we get spam that becomes content, and good content – but then does it not become content and not spam?! This is why I said at the start you can end up chasing your own tail.

I wasn’t suggesting the Rae’s content is rubbish/spam or anything negative. In fact its good. She asked the question as to whether Twitter lay down for Google. I think what caught my attention most was the anti-Google tone amidst the growing anti-Google comments; these are beginning to sound similar to the anti-Microsoft remarks that have been made for so long. The bigger and more powerful an institution becomes, the more people start to resent it and the influence it has. Google does have that influence, Twitter have responded, and in the context of it doing so to protect its financial future its entirely understandable. Perhaps my first post intimated that I thought she was just spamming and that’s why she responded with anger – or maybe she’s just demonstrating why one shouldn’t “mess with a woman that can pull rank”!

Anyway, it’s not a case of respecting (or not) someones opinion based on their status, it’s asking yourself the question that if you were Twitter, believing that you were potentially risking your business by not having a nofollow there, what would you do? I think the answer would be to do what they have done. If on the other hand you were an ‘Internet purist’ (I know, I should stop using the term) then your own ‘belief’ would be that Twitter was wrong because their action goes against that belief.

@Tim: Nofollow never stopped comment spam, so I don’t think it will help Twitter if stopping spam was their main intention.

And if we consider that “traffic” (based on browser stats) is going to be the new linkjuice, maybe nofollow won’t matter that much anyway?

i think the real question is not “why cant we have our link juice”, but, what is googles motivation for this? they arent paid links, so it doesnt go against guidelines – wouldn’t it actually benefit all involved to ‘reward’ involved users? I mean, to get 1500 followers , google should take notice that the posts is so popular. the entire SE is based around delivering results people want – i mean, what could be more helpful than this to determine popularity?

So if the problem was spam, and spam accounts are not deactivated, why are not *all* links tagged with nofollow ? From an SEO standpoint it appears to me that it can be just as valuable to add links into the timeline.

Anyway, to me this problem highlights something that worries me about the so called “web 3.0″, the semantic web. Under that model, search engines and a whole new generation of agents would be able to better understand hypertext through the use of more specific inline tags. Now, if we are having all this trouble with just the nofollow, imagine what it could be like in that future context, with everybody competing by blackhatting on a word-by-word basis.

So it seems the way pagerank reacts to nofollow was just a short term solution, perhaps it did offer some spam protection, but Google will have to find more intelligent ways to filter out the noise.