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
-
External linking
Hi guys. So I know external linking is good, as I've seem to have read every article written on the subject from 2007 to 2016, but can't seem to find anything more recent, but does that mean you are better to at least one external link on every page? And if so, would it suffice to link just to our social media profiles even if you are in an industry where social media brings in very little in the way of customer enquiries? I've actually linked to all our social profiles but made them nofollow. However, that said, would it be better to leave them nofollow and link to Government white papers in my sector for example?
Social Media | | ThorUK0 -
How to fix external links with missing anchor
Hello, My SEO audit on my site shows we have 858 external links with missing anchor, report shows Target URL and Source URL. How I can fix external links with missing anchor? None of them looks like spam, my target URL is all from our Social Media. Twitter, Google Plus, Linkedin, Pinterest, Facebook ... Here is the link to the the excel spread shit report and you can see it yourself. https://na53.salesforce.com/sfc/p/60000000IcOQ/a/f2000000UVi7/hBZ6Z1tGEFcJOTvVtfjYtYhi_HTw8fRqe9SMjuWcdOA We use ''Hootsuite'' to shrink the URL and post in to our social media, is that maybe we having this problem now? Thank you,
Social Media | | Kiakh19870 -
When with Google+ bio area backlinks get devalued if we have everybody link to our site
Hello, As you know, Google+ bios, if they have a link in them are dofollow. I'm doing a link building campaign, and we already linked one of our Google+ pages to our home page and top 2 articles. My question is, to get links, can we have family and friends add links in their bios too for a total of 6 links to the home page (6 people) and some links to our articles? Or will Google devalue them because we are family and friends? How many is too many? Thanks.
Social Media | | BobGW0 -
Conent Marketing: Link Building Relationships: What to do on facebook
Hello, We've developed a piece of niche content. We're building relationships with sites in our niche for link building. Below is our engagement process. What do we do on facebook (#5) other than 'like' them? Can you give me some exact ideas of what works? 1. Like them on facebook 2. Follow them on Twitter 3. Add them on G+ 4. Read their recent blog posts. 5. Comment in their facebook account about what I liked about their latest blog posts and tweet 6. Post helpful blog post comments
Social Media | | BobGW0 -
Twitter lists - Transferring from 1 account to another
Hi Does anybody know how to transfer Twitter lists from 1 account to another ? Twitter says this isnt possible but is anyone aware of any software that can do this (or technique) ? Both accounts have the same owner Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Twitter and SEO
Hello Mozzers, I am trying to determine the effectiveness of using twitter as an SEO tactic. A site in my niche (healthcare job boards) is ranking very well for a handful of head terms. Their backlink profile is okay, but not amazing. But one thing that stands out to me is their approach to twitter, http://www.physemp.com/socialTwitter.html. It looks like they send an automated feed of their jobs to these specific twitter handles. Each of the handles has over 2,000 followers (some are legit some are bots). The site ranks for some highly competitive head terms (see attached). Can any of their ranking success be attributed to these various twitter handles? Is Google seeing these twitter feeds and associating high follower count and high tweet frequency with the URL attached to each account? Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Thanks in advanced! lMbkS
Social Media | | CJSmiles0 -
What is more important, tweets/shares or traditional link building?
SMM has a presence that is just growing and growing. I'm hearing all these back and forth talks about how tweets/shares are influencing rankings more than traditional link building would. If so, would this be a short term ranking improvement, long term? What percentage would you say SMM (ranking factor) has when ranking a website in the SERPS.
Social Media | | Brother220 -
Who do you follow on Twitter?
I am just getting to grips with Twitter, suppose its better later than never, and was wondering who everyone follows for SEO and Web Design. Personal i find it hard to keep up with more than five or six people with out getting information overload, and have no time for those that tweet twenty or thirty times a day about what they had for lunch or who they are meeting for drinks. If you had to pick the top five people to follow for SEO and the top five for Web Design who would you chose? I work on the SEO side of our business and i think my top five would be, in no particular order: Randfish
Social Media | | fraserhannah
bill_slawski
mattcutts
aaronwall
dannysullivan Would be interested what others think especially on the web design side as we tend to follow people we know locally. Thanks Fraser1