Twitter and Google: How Does Google Rank Your Tweets?
Knowing what Google thinks is what SEOs spend most of their time trying to figure out. And it’s an inexact science at best. But sometimes… just sometimes, Google TELLS us what it’s thinking, which is good. Knowing what to expect always makes things better, eh?
So, a little while back, Google started adding Twitter Tweets to the search results. Everyone wondered how those would be indexed and ranked, and there was a lot of speculation about how things would end up, where they’d be placed, and so on. A couple of months ago, Amit Singhal, Google’s real time search guru guy (which Tweets, blog posts, video, Facebook, and other avenues of communication that are immediate in nature) told us how this works, and so… nobody needs to wonder. How cool is that?
It’s about followers, baby.
Followers. Here’s what Singhal said in a Technology Review article, “How Google Ranks Tweets“:
“In the case of tweets, the key is to identify ‘reputed followers,’” said Singhal. “You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers, his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely.” And then went on to say, “It is ‘definitely, definitely’ more than a popularity contest.”
Let’s tie this to web page ranking. Pages that have lots of links pointing to them are ranked higher than pages that don’t. So, in Twitter terms, followers are like links to you. The more followers you have pointing to your profile and your tweets, the higher Google ranks you in the Twitterverse.
They’re giving you what in the search world is “reputation.” It comes from anchor text on web pages linking to your page, and in Twitter, it comes from followers. If you’re cool and have lots of followers, you have a higher Twitter reputation. And it seems that the higher the reputation of the people following you, the higher your reputation will rise, just as pages that have a higher page rank send more important backlinks to your web page.
Google also has filters that decide whether your tweet is spammy or not.
Google looks at hashtags, too. If a lot of people click on hashtags to get to your content, that gives your tweets more weight. (Quick, everyone go click on #theSEONewsBlog! 
) But be careful… using the wrong hashtags can be considered spammy, too.
Google notices if other words that are appropriate to the topic are included in tweets. So, for example, if you have #Olympics and skiing or snowboarding in the same tweet, it will probably be considered ham. If you use a hashtage like #Olympics and follow it with an affiliate link that has no relevance, you’ll probably be in the spam soup.
But here’s the thing. Sure, build your followers at Twitter, but don’t waste too much time on trying to get your tweets ranked. Real-time results don’t last! Put your efforts more into creating SEO-friendly content like blog posts and articles that will get you some of that great targeted, organic traffic for much, much longer than just an hour or two (if that). It’s just kind of interesting to see how Google sees tweets in the search scheme of things.
Of course, you have to be a bit of a geek like me to care. Ha!
