According to data from several data analysis companies, after Elon Musk took measures to limit the user browsing of social media Twitter, Twitter’s search exposure on the US version of Google increased by one day. fell by 32%.
According to data from search engine optimization platform Sistrix, Twitter’s search exposure on the US version of Google dropped by 32% in one day. In addition, it was reported that when Google searched all news reports in the United States and the United Kingdom, Twitter’s search exposure dropped by 12% to 14%.
This situation is still in flux. Search exposure may also recover if Twitter takes quick steps to address the current issues.
But many experts say it’s one of the worst company-made mistakes in search engine optimization in recent years.
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Over the weekend, Twitter boss Elon Musk moved to limit the number of tweets users can view in an attempt to address third-party scraping of Twitter data.
To reduce data scraping from third parties, Elon Musk announced a temporary limit on the number of tweets users can read each day.
Initially, those verified Twitter accounts can read 6,000 tweets per day, unverified accounts can read 600, and unverified newly registered accounts can only read 300 tweets.
Subsequently, Twitter adjusted the limit twice in a row. The daily tweet views of verified Twitter accounts, unverified Twitter accounts and unverified newly registered accounts were 10,000, 1,000, and 500, respectively. strip.
Elon Musk said in a statement: “Our intention is to solve the problem of data scraping, because it has been affecting the actual experience of users.” “Hundreds of organizations have been accessing Twitter data, and we believe these measures are necessary. .”
Although Elon Musk’s approach is to improve the user experience of Twitter, it affects the operation of Google’s search web crawler.
Data scraping and data scraping is the basis for Google to determine the search ranking of web pages.
Google reads data from various URLs every day, constantly updating the search engine index information. Elon Musk’s restrictions also affected Google search access to the Twitter platform, resulting in a decline in search exposure.
As a result, tweets are less and less likely to show up in Google searches.
A recent data analysis shows that Twitter has lost nearly 60,000 keyword rankings from the top 10 of Google search results, many of which are major keywords, according to preliminary statistics from the US version of Google Search.
In the U.S. search engine market, Twitter has lost its third-ranked position for the keyword “Yankee” alone. The search term gets 1.8 million hits a month in the U.S., which would have brought about 168,000 hits a month to Twitter, an advantage now lost to espn.com.
As Twitter’s visibility on Google’s search engine dwindles, its competitors benefit.
Domains such as instagram.com, facebook.com, rlinkedin.com, spotify.com, and espn.com all saw improvements in their search engine rankings.
Sistrix said Twitter’s rankings continued to decline. New data shows that search engine rankings for the keyword “Trump” in Twitter content have dropped out of the top 10.
For a real-time information platform like Twitter, its ranking in Google’s search engine directly affects its ability to attract users and retain casual visitors.
If this issue is not addressed in a timely manner, the current situation may have a long-term impact on Twitter user growth and user stickiness metrics.
Although Twitter users can largely access the platform directly, the decline in search exposure will prevent more people from discovering new content.
Potential users who rely on Google searches to find tweets about a particular topic also sometimes choose to sign up for a Twitter account. A drop in search exposure could cause those people to migrate to other social media.
So, can Twitter recover? How Twitter and Google handle the situation will determine whether Twitter content can be restored.
Google uses complex algorithms to analyze historical data from individual websites. If search exposure drops for an extended period of time, it will be harder for Twitter to regain lost rankings even after fixing the problem.
But the Internet ecosystem is dynamic after all. If Twitter can quickly address the underlying issues affecting Google’s search crawler, it may also gradually return to its original position.
Twitter’s precipitous drop in visibility on Google’s search engine also shows that major tech platforms are already interdependent, and any company change could quickly have unintended consequences.
