Is Twitter Stealing Our Link Juice?
-
Something recently clicked in my mind when looking at the way our web developers were linking to our twitter accounts:.
They were linking like this: A) https://twitter.com/#!/aczarto
Instead of like this: B) https://twitter.com/aczarto
(Due to a copy/paste from the address bar).Technically (A) is a link to the homepage of twitter and NOT to the individual twitter account as in **(B) **(The hash tag isn't technically part of the url, and traditionally Google has ignored everything after the hashtag)
For me, this raises a few thoughts/comments:
- Make sure your web team is linking in (B) format and not just copy pasting the url when they visit your company's twitter page.
- I don't think twitter is doing this on purpose - but if they are - it is EVIL GENIUS! They are stealing lots of links heading into a user's account page and instead sending that link juice to their home page.
- Does Google-bot follow hash tags? ie: When Google hits the link (A), does it crawl twitter.com/ or does it crawl twitter.com/#!/aczarto?
- Is this a tactic that can be leveraged by others to try and direct links to other pages? ie: MyWebStore.com/money-page/#show-link-bait that generates shares that actually produce links to the site's money page instead of the intended link-bait.
- Could this be possibly considered cloaking?
Looking forward to people's thoughts...
-
I don't think so. Twitter helps a lot to get social signals for pages. I did this for my page of horse that hosted on WordPress.
-
Very cool. I've added a screen shot just in case the SERPs change at a later date.
-
lol....no it was not intentional....:)
without.....but when you click on them both are listed with the #!.
Yesterday for some reason my twitter account rankings went through the roof and I am ranked for many keywords for my twitter account now. I am not sure what happened but am very happy about it.
-
Could you provide a link to the SERP or a screenshot? I only see the non-hashtag version:
Also, the links you provided above link to the @OrthoJobs twitter account -- Is that intentional?
-
both of mine are listed on twitter. for example. @ horsebuggy shows up as
-
Horse Buggy
<cite>twitter.com/horsebuggy</cite>Sign up for Twitter to follow Horse Buggy (@_HorseBuggy_). Horse Buggy is the Leading provider of**...**
-
<cite>https://twitter.com/#!/HorseBuggy</cite>Sign up for Twitter to followk HorseBuggy.net (@_HorseBuggy_). Leading provider of Horse Buggies.....
-
-
Figured out the answers from this SERP:
Notice how the SEER Interactive twitter account is listed like this: https://twitter.com/#!/seerinteractive (likely because that's how they link to it from their homepage: http://www.seerinteractive.com/)
And not like this: https://twitter.com/seerinteractiveSo the answers to the questions above are:
- It doesn't matter which format you use as Google understands that this is a special case URL, and will include the hashtag in the spidered URL. But, you may still have canonical link issues and splitting of link juice.
- Link juice is going to your twitter account page regardless of how you link. Twitter is not stealing link juice to it's homepage.
- Google has a special case for Twitter - With twitter URLS, Google will consider the hashtag to be part of the URL.
- This tactic could be leveraged by others, but it would be considered cloaking. It is not cloaking in Twitter's case, as Google recognizes the URL as a unique url.
Hope someone found this interesting. (I did!)
Alex
-
I put my twitter url on a directory and it was not working...so they changed it.
They sent me the following message.
The following changes have been made:
** Twitter Id changing from http://twitter.com/widget to http://twitter.com/#!/widget
Should I have them change it to something else?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Linkedin "company website" link - any value?
Hi So, on Linkedin, I can put my company website. I've been trying to figure out if this is a nofollow, or do follow - or, not even really a link. Here's how it appears in my profile's source code Websites <a target="_blank" <strong="">href="/redir/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmaxvape%2Ecom&urlhash=MtlQ&trk=ppro_website">Company Website</a> Is this even a "link"? I'm guessing the way it is built, no it's not even a nofollow link. Secondly, does anyone know any good link-juice you can get form Linkedin. Thanks!
Social Media | | Ted_Cullen0 -
If you post on two Twitter accounts could be rated as duplicate content
I have a personal Twitter account which is building up, but I also have a Twitter account for my holiday letting agency and until now I’ve always separated the subject of the tweets and links to my websites but I’m using Buffer which automates your tweets in advance and so I included some of the links to my business holiday letting agency articles on my personal account and people seem to like them and have shared them, but is there any risks to doing that regarding duplicate type of content? At the end of the day some the people on my personal Twitter will be interested in my agency tweets about holiday accommodation, I just want to do anything which could be termed spam.
Social Media | | persuaders0 -
Can Twitter really help your Google Rankings??
Hi Guys, Can anyone tell me if Twitter really does help with your Goolge rankings? If I go to the trouble of setting up a Twitter account for my business will it really help with me getting higher rankings? If so is it a case of me just posting tweets all the time and links to my website? Any help or guidance be grateful guys Thanks Gareth
Social Media | | GAZ090 -
Google plus, Twitter and Facebook link - does it help?
Hello, I was wondering, does it help if I publish a link to a new page on my website on my Facebook-, Google + and Twitter-Account - even if noone reposts it? Thanks Polyniki
Social Media | | polyniki0 -
Do links in Paper.li twitter round-ups help my SEO?
My twitter feed is picked up in the daily roundups like Paper.li. Do these links count towards my SEO effort or are they just empty. Clearly they spread my content so that great, just wondered if the links pass juice to the site.
Social Media | | GlobalLingo0 -
Impact of URL shorteners in Twitter feeds
Hello, Will use of URL shorteners [bit.ly/tiny.cc or equivalent] in Twitter feeds impact the rankings of a target pages? As I understand it Twiitter links are automatically generated as nofollows so I am assuming the published link is irrelevant. Is this still the case? If we do continue to use URL shortereners should we look at branded URL-shorteners to provide link context? Thanks.
Social Media | | Urbanfox0 -
Anyone know if optimal Twitter use frequency for promoting a keyword i.e how much is too much
Have a Twitter account and theres much confusion over Twitters use of planting keywords into posts and have some SEO benefit from this. Wondering if anyone has come accross an effective use of promoting keyterms on by twitter posting and how often is deemed okay? Generally see some twitter users who are obvioulsy promoting keyterms for their buisness or company who put in as much as five to ten posts in any one day for the same keyword, or keyphrase. while this looks spammy surely this is liable to be flagged by the search engines? Appreciate any insights on this.
Social Media | | callassist0