What Is This Google / Twitter Thing? Options

[bwelford]

I'm wondering that too. Why do Twitter pages get higher pagerank so easily?

[AbleReach]

I'm assuming it's trickle down from Twitter.com.

The tidbit that I think is interesting is doing a G search for site:http://www.twitter.com and seeing a random mix from pr 0 to 5, including accounts that have been deleted. And the relative activity within the accounts themselves seem random - might be little personal things or big businessy things.

[bwelford]

You're right, Elizabeth. Twitter itself has PageRank of 9 so that's a good place to be starting from.

[EGOL]

I have not been looking at PR... however, I see a couple of competitors have twitter pages ranking well in SERPs that are not extremely easy. With a couple links they might rank easily because of twitter's domain authority.

I just linked to my twitter page from my blog and homepage. I will be watching where it settles in the SERPs.

[A.N.Onym]

As EGOL, I haven't been checking PR of my Twitter profile, but it is one of the few profile pages (the other is LinkedIn) that's competing with my own About page in the SERPs.

I think it comes from great interlinking (and maybe links from blog posts, because, really, people do link to their and others profiles from time to time).

[glyn]

Google Likes Twitter, it's as simple as that. You can find other websites that they like too.

[rustybrick]

This doesnt hurt either http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/goo...on-twitter.html

[glyn]

Eeek, I want to avoid that Google Spam.

[iamlost]

From a Google perspective Twitter is a great threat. And so they apply the Wikipedia treatment - by positioning themselves as the easy way to search both. They have done the same with other SM threats.

Unfortunately this also pushes query related 'actual' sites down the SERPs, for many not just below the fold (emphasising their own properties already doing that for many queries) but off the first page entirely. And the number of affected niches/verticals continues to grow.

For those who rely solely or nearly so on Google generated traffic being active in such third party sites is an increasing marketing requirement. That it moves one's own properties to third place in one's dev schedule is going to cause more and more business model breakdowns, by extending conversion channels and increasing dropouts to those upstream options.

[bwelford]

You're right, iamlost. That just makes going for the long tail searches even more important. As they say, content is King or Queen.

[glyn]

People that rely on Google for all their traffic, I would hope are actually using G's PPC mechanism because it's not really plannable to run a marketing strategy based on Google's organic results in the primary categories [caveat: of course there are still some niche's which are working really well in Google, such as the long-tail, but I'm talking about the Top level stuff]. They've fluxed their algo to such an extent that either you're Google favourites or your not.

I think that an effective web strategy is bigger than Google's 1st page, but I'll take that too if I want , it's just their their hits/conversions ratio is pretty cr**. Yahoo/MSN or web 2.00 convert much nicer. I'm pleased that I'm taking a 60/40 ratio with search/social media, and that the latter visitor is captured somehow, not another search visitor that I hope might come back again. Social Media visitors get stuck like a fly in a trap and that trap is something that they like to be in, so balance that against a G visitor.

[iamlost]

...their their hits/conversions ratio is pretty cr**. Yahoo/MSN or web 2.00 convert much nicer.

Agreed.

People that rely on Google for all their traffic, I would hope are actually using G's PPC mechanism because it's not really plannable to run a marketing strategy based on Google's organic results in the primary categories...

Agreed.
The problem with ppc is that I would consider it a short term business model. That does not make it 'bad' by any means. just not my business model.

I carefully targeted second and third level competitive categories. With great offline industry depth for direct ad space and af opportunities. Which demands maximising qualified/targeted traffic. And that is less and less every year something that Google provides - they still refer the most SE traffic but convert 3rd or 4th depending on month and niche.

If current trend lines continue in 5 or 6 years I might actually be considering taking G off my bot whitelist - something that would have seemed inconceivable a couple of years ago.

I do agree about SM traffic - properly derived it is delightfully sticky.

[notepage]

Twitter is popular, hence the profiles are more popular.