Today, at the SMX Sydney conference, Darren Rowse and I had a fascinating conversation that I felt compelled to share.
In 2006, a popular blog post or piece of content would generate a remarkable amount of blogging activity. It wasn't uncommon for a few hundred small & mid-size blogs & news sites to pick up a story, add their thoughts and create links. Today, even very popular pieces of content in the technology sphere are lucky to have two dozen blogs and traditional websites write about them. What's happened? Darren and I proposed a few potential theories:
- Blogging has become less about sharing with your network and more about building up your own importance/business, so linking and covering the works of your peers, unless it gets you something, has limited viability. Bloggers are more professional, more self-focused and find less value in linking to/covering what others produce.
- Blogging, at least in the "bleeding edge" technology fields (social media, SEO, webdev, etc.), is not as popular as it once was. While this might be a hard argument to make, there's certainly some circumstantial evidence - just look at my list of SEO blogs from 2006 and 2007 - there is an undeniably smaller amount of content being produced by many of these folks.
- Twitter is cannibalizing blogging. People who previously might have blogged about a site/news article/clever piece of linkbait are simply tweeting it, and save their blog posts for more comprehensive essays and broader subjects.
This last one is fascinating to me, and carries some interesting connotations. If the trend is real, and continues, it seems very likely to me that the search engines will need to start relying on Twitter's tweet graph, particularly for "new" information and content?
Darren and I remarked that:
- Twitter, and sites that aggregate data from it, like Tweetmeme, actually expose content before social voting sites like Digg, Reddit or Hacker News
- It can be 12-24 hours between when content is first "tweeted" vs. when it earns its first external link
- Many pieces of "throwaway" content (a quick, funny image, post or video) will earn virtually no links, even if hundreds of people have shared them on Twitter
I think it's way too early to determine if this trend is real or if it will continue, but the SEO industry has been talking for years about when the engines might start to evolve beyond link analysis. This is one of the first credible expansions I've seen.
Love to hear your thoughts (and please remember, this is just my personal impression & opinion).
p.s. A good post on a simlar topic comes from Aaron Wall - How Twitter Can Be Corrosive to Online Marketing.
I completely agree - I think this is similar to the issues I was trying to highlight in my post about the impact of microblogging and nofollow on SEO.
I can't believe the search engines will ignore this for long - I would have thought they were already working on it - and I think there are some huge opportunities for people to find ways to combine the same trend with owning your own content (essentially 'twitter on your own domain').
Agree with you both. I think the sheer volume of content being pumped onto the internet, daily, in an attempt to garner attention also makes it a tougher market to gain links for even the highest quality content.
Will be interesting to see what the engines do to combat this.
Willcritchlow-
Loved your post, I was wondering if you think that the search engines will develop a way to incorporate the linking from micro-blogging sites into the algorithim for what is and isn't good content? It would have to be calculated so differently from what's already being done (no anchor text, no-follow, for example) that I can't imagine what that would look like, but I also can't imagine Google continuing to ignore the relevance of traffic from micro-blog sites...
I'm sure that data will be used in one form or another. I keep meaning to check through recent patents / information retrieval papers to see if anyone is filing interesting things about this.
I am prepared to stand in my shameful spotlight as I just don't get twitter. At all. No matter how hard I try.
@Mintyman... I too will stand in that spotlight.
@Darren.........Thanks for the company. It makes me feel better to know i'm not alone on this one.
I'm on this bus too. I have avoided twitter since it went "nofollow", although I may pick it back up if I run out of ways to confuse myself and waste time in the process.
I don't get it either... I will allow others build models of how to use it in my niches and then - if it works I'll jump in and tramp the pedal down hard and catch up. That is more efficient than puttering around going no where to develop an effective use model for your specific niche.
Twitter is an absolute powerhouse and the implications of its ranking capability are enormous.
You may have noticed that they recently changed their user url structure to include the profile name.
How many times has your name been mentioned on the web Rand?
Do a search for either randfish or Rand Fishkin and look what you find in such a short period of time and although you do have a significant bunch of followers, you aren't a twitter power user.
The point being - you want to rank for a word or phrase? Create a twitter account with that word or phrase and you have a pretty nice landing page.
Need to do some rep management for your client? Twitter can easily help.
The list goes on...
"The point being - you want to rank for a word or phrase? Create a twitter account with that word or phrase and you have a pretty nice landing page."
Sean, this is precisely the point that many marketers are missing.
Twitter can be used much in the same manner as SEO or PPC. The same tactics apply. You can build dedicated landing pages in Twitter, target followers based on keyword tweets, push keyword specific tweets to those followers and drive qualified traffic to your website.
We've actually seen conversion rates from our Twitter profiles outperforming our PPC efforts. Now, I'm not ready to say (PPT) pay-per-tweet will replace PPC, but the possibilities are intriguing.
Like the tactics DELL followed?
You say "Twitter is cannibalizing blogging" as if it's a *bad* thing, Rand. What an odd notion. Blogging was becoming a bit of a blight on the web graph, frankly, and if Twitter can make the problem bloggers step into the 140 char world, and away from the rest of teh intarwebs, I can only see that as a good thing. Maybe the graph will snap back to having actual sites as the high importance nodes, like it used to be.
If we're really lucky, maybe Twitter will encourage people to think about linking out again, since dropping links works so well there
I hope people do start linking out again, I've already noticed 4 sites (news/community sites) today that use our research but never link out - instead they make their money thru ads & Google content network at the side.
"Actual sites"? Are you trying to say that a blog is not an actual site?
>> Are you trying to say that a blog is not an actual site?
In some cases, hellz yeah. I'm certainly not painting all bloggers with the same brush, but I think we all know there are several classes of blog that don't really add value to anyone but the author. From my POV as an SEO, I am boundlessly grateful that blogs give me big levers to manipulate SEs with, but from my POV as an intarwebs user, I'd like for some of the more obvious circle jerks and pimps to be canned, because they distort their "neighbourhood", and make it hard for me to find the content I actually want.
I see.. Pretty much the same problem with a lot of those link directories that are only build for the SE's. Even though I think that a blog that delivers bs to it's users does not get very high rankings .. why would people link to a page full of bs? And how would such a page rank high without having good quality links?
In a blog, you have space and time to comment on any links you make, to introduce, to give context.
That's hard in twitter's 140 character limit. Will search engines become cluttered with endless "here's some cool info about SEO" retreats?
I refuse to like Twitter. I guess I'm alone here...
I only use twitter during conferences. I am not a fan of it either.
You're not alone. I can't stand it either... I would very much like it to be a passing fad. I'm afraid it isn't though...
you're not alone. "We" may be quiet and ashamed, but we are mighty!
You say that blogging is not as popular as it once was, but I must disagree. I would say, in fact, that the opposite is actually true - that blogs are not getting as much attention as they once did because blogs are TOO popular. There are millions of blogs on the internet, and with more choices, each one gets less individual attention. I think this is a more likely theory.
I think that Twitter has become a resource for sharing these types of viral links, but it's net impact is probably a wash.
Twitter likely exposes more people to these types of links and in a more direct and personal manner than more traditional social bookmarking avenues.
I believe the reduction in blog links is, as you pointed out, more of a phenomenon of increased professionalism and that such informal peer-to-peer linking would have decreased with or without twitter.
That being said, considering that SEO is a competition, it is not necessarily bad for webmasters that bloggers are not wantonly linking to every lolcat and top 10 list that is available. It just means that those of us who can succeed at coaxing bloggers to link to our content will reap greater relative rewards.
The proliferation of URL shortening services often passing the user through a 302 redirect instead of the expected 301 redirect is likely an interesting challenge for search engines, as is the fact that some pages will be pointed at by multiple shorts, and some shorts will be used on multiple pages/sites and others will be used just once. How those are combined is likely to have led to some changes in how Google score such links.
I will throw up all over my monitor when I start seeing Twitter posts rank well in Google. What kind of search experience would that be. PUKE!
Maybe everyone will think that I am stupid, but I really hate Twitter.
It is only time spending machine, and everyone knows that most of users are marketers, CEOs, companies (to share their updates), and some people that like to be a celebrity and be followed by others.
Rand, I don’t think that ever Twitter will cannibalize blogging. Yes, it is true that blogging getting less interesting these days, including SEOmoz blog, but it is only because people have already covered and spoke about their subject.
I think blogging will live forever, and it is really great technology. Maybe in the future will a technology developed, better than blogging, and it will take place. But I am sure, it will not be Twitter.
absolutely agree!
Zevu, I agree with you somewhat. I do not personally like Twitter and do not see it over taking blogging. I do see it taking a far share of blogging market share away. I've had a few clients that have wanted to stop blogging and only use twitter. Not the best option in my mind, keep both was my suggestion.
It is the best option I think.
We must admit that Twitter has done a great marketing work. But by the time people will understand what they really don't need it. They will understand that "following more than 10 people on Twitter is a mission impossible" (Quote: Guy Kawasaki). Instead of reading what are people now doing, many important tasks can be done.
Yes, it is true that blogging getting less interesting these days, including SEOmoz blog, but it is only because people have already covered and spoke about their subject. Thumbs up for the entertainingly-brutal honesty.
Yes, it is true that blogging getting less interesting these days
That may have been the case until now. I will soon unleash an assault of original content on the blogging world, the likes of which you have never seen.
From wide and far reaching topics such as "12 minute potbellies" and "90 days to Fat and Ugly" to "Lifestyles of the Poor and Infamous"...
Stay tuned...
Waiting for them :)
feel free to ping us
From wide and far reaching topics such as "12 minute potbellies" and "90 days to Fat and Ugly" to "Lifestyles of the Poor and Infamous"... I am well versed in all of those topics. If you need an expert to guest-post, let me know.
As well as Tweets taking over from blogging activitiy I think blog commenting has also been affected, with conversations happening on twitter instead of blog comments.
Interesting thoughts here Rand, I drew some similar conclusions the other day in an article on my blog after twitter changed the way your name / twitter name is displayed on the site and also in Google.
The article is How long until your twitter account outranks your blog?
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.
Cheers
Mat
I have to agree with your post, twitter and any other site that has the same impact will have to be considered in future.
I have an blog MMO-Symposium, about online games which I started as a place for myself and some friends to put our thoughts and experiences down outside our normal in game guild site.
Until starting this blog I'd not really heard much about twitter (I'm in the UK ;)) and didn't really "get" it.
Via a wordpress plugin called twitme I now have all blog posts auto posting to a twitter account I setup. We only have 8 twitter followers but 5 of those 8 found the blog through twitter alone. One is a game developer and another a PR at a games company. So twitter has not only gained followers, but blog readers and some of those are involved in the industry we write about.
We also have gained links in other blogs blogrolls as a result of twitter followers.
Whilst our blog is not a business I am an avid reader of SEOmoz as SEO knowledge doesn't have to be put to use in a profit making/business related blog. :)
Agreed, its also something in Press Releases and news - where often sites take content and dont link out to the companies, but use internal linking to build themselves up. Making it increasingly difficult to get links.
Not sure how google will address the twitter phase, but as long as twitter continues to be a viable business no doubt the search engines will be planning how to adapt to it. Of course the spam issues of Twitter would have to be addressed first...
I'm also finding that this trend is affecting my own blog-reading habits. I'm finding myself not using my feed-reader any more but rather relying on my twitter friends to twitter their most recent blog posts and then going to their sites from there. I'm also spending less time on blogs on average- rather I'm reading them for the articles and hardly ever coming back to read comments (except for SEOmoz, where the comments are more like a forum experience). Instead I follow and read the comments of what people have to say in the @author replies in their twitter feeds about the posts.
I can't tell you how many blogs I used to enjoy have gone silent for months, only to return with "sorry I haven't been updating, you should follow me on Twitter instead."
For better or worse, its definitely happening.
I can not say I use twitter. I actually see it very similar to a phone call vs SMS. There is times when a one on one call with more depth is a lot better and when you can blast all your contacts with some information is better. It is just a tool, it seems to be the flavour of the month. Will it die no, maybe I am wrong, but I do not think it is as big deal in the long term of things.
Twittering something is a lot easier than blogging about something. You can't just blog one line about something and get your point across. Twitter has the remarkable ability to be short, sweet and very effective. Of course, blogging will always have it's place and won't go away. I think twittering is just the new craze these days.
I still don't understand it.
What's the purpose? I've looked at some twits for the first time ever this morning and it just looks like a pile of trash?
It is the whole "real-time" aspect that is going to change everything. I eventually see Twittering being used in courtrooms - car accidents being twittered the moment they happen to see who's at fault. Crime scenes twittered to prove how things were when they actually happened. The technology is a long ways away from all this. Maybe another ten years. The the fact is - it is a technology. It will be amazing to see what the Twitter team creates in the years to come now that it is porting over to SCALA... https://www.scala-lang.org/node/1382
I would have to say that Twitter has affected my blogging habits.
As a developer, I started my blog 2above.com to exclusively dedicate to twitter phenomenon, especially store my own research about twitter with the purpose of identifying the product opportunity that I can work on myself. From that sense, I think that is exactly what Rand tried to cross the point on, apart from twitter's impact on SEO.
Since negotiations are going between Google and Twitter, Yahoo created the application "Sideline" for searching Twitter, based on Adobe Airline technology, I agree that search engines will not ignore this anymore so let us see what will happen in the future and it seems to be the near one!
I've definitely found that it's much, much easier to Tweet about something than to blog it.
It will definitely be interesting to watch how search engines react to what I see as a real trend.
Isn't it great to read or re-read a blog post months after it's published and have comments to share:-P
I visited a cartoon blog that a friend Tweeted me about just this morning (DogEatDoug.com). The site has daily Tweets listed as posts on the blog. I read through a few, and was wondering how posting Tweets on a website would affect SEO and how SEO would affect Tweeting. Will we start dropping keywords in our Tweets to keep up our SERPS? Will people start displaying Tweets from competitors to boost rankings?
I know feeding your Tweets into your webpage kills your API, but it might be a fair trade-off to share the link love.
I visited a cartoon blog that a friend Tweeted me about just this morning (DogEatDoug.com). The site has daily Tweets listed as posts on the blog. I read through a few, and was wondering how posting Tweets on a website would affect SEO and how SEO would affect Tweeting. Will we start dropping keywords in our Tweets to keep up our SERPS? Will people start displaying Tweets from competitors to boost rankings?
I know feeding your Tweets into your webpage kills your API, but it might be a fair trade-off to share the link love.
Google wants Twitter. They're going to try and buy it. At the very least, they'll try and license the data. Twitter may indeed by cannibalizing the web's link graph - and that means Twitter itself is replacing that signal.
Oh, and good luck to Microsoft trying to make a play for Twitter. Here's the thing about Microsoft: nobody wants to be a part of their empire. Money matters, but I guarantee Google could buy Twitter for a heck of a lot less money than Microsoft based on brand alone.
The negotiation between Google and Twitter has started.
yeah. got to respect the guys at twitter for putting users first, and not just going for the money. same reason google thrives, they put users first. well.. better than the rest, anyway.
Google and other search engines put a lot of importance on online media reports. If a website was featured in CNN.com, WSJ.com or other major online publications, it will rank much higher than the sites which have hundreds of link-farm-generated links. Does anybody know of a good list of PR firms specializing in online publicity? Publicity Guaranteed (PublicityGuaranteed.com) looks like an attractive option, as they only charge for the results, without any retainers or hourly rates; however they don’t do online-only publicity. AllPublicits.com seems to be the most comprehensive database of publicists and I posted there my RFP for publicists to bid on, but all resulting bids included traditional media. If I had a larger budget, I wouldn’t mind good coverage in traditional media, but I only seek publicity for my SEO campaign, so I need online publicity only
Rand,
I just accidently proved YOU ARE RIGHT.
After reading your blog post, I liked it. So I automatically mentioned it in a quick TWEET @ChrisTech with a link back to SEOmoz.
10 minutes later I realized, I had just fulfilled the scenario you reported.
Question: Is the following correct?
In the tweet I mention SEOmoz then use a TINY URL link to your blog, https://tinyurl.com/cdcn9s. I think this gives some minor link value to you, but does not build any link value for me. ... Is this correct?
Google shows more than 55M page indexed for twitter. (site:twitter.com)
I believe that they are following those links (or at least working on it).
I haven't made that test but it will be nice to create one in which you upload a new page and link to it only from twitter. I believe that google and all the other search engines will eventually find it.
I'll take the chalange and let you know in few weeks (maybe it worth a YouMoz post?)
I recently started a blog and haven't promoted it much as it needs a lot of work before I start pimpin' it out. Having said that, I have received a decent amount of traffic to my blog via my Twitter profile (and SEOmoz).
Does it have to be one over the other? If you're in an appropriate industry for social media marketing you can find ways to have various forms of social media work together harmoniously.
Rand, i agree with a lot of your post. You now have to optimize for the search engines in mind and the twitter machine as well. If you have a competitior that is using twitter and your client refuses, you have to be extremely tactful on how to combat the twitter flood. It will only get worse as the new user sign up soars. They just hit 8 million members increasing 33% in the last two months. Imagine when or if they reach 100million.
I also agree that its has put a major dent in the blog productions, and we have only just begun to see the effect. However I am not sold that is a bad thing. It in some ways is an evolution and only the strong will survive. While you only need a few charactors for some things, you will still always need to link to something for an indepth look and to really drill down on the subject. I think good blogs will have place for a long time, and i am not sure exactly how much useful blog content we will be missing.
I think that Google and the other search engines will evolve to pick up conversations on twitter (if they don't already). Once that happens, the original content would receive it's due link credit. Even if the search engines relied on a twitter aggregator for their link data. That wouldn't even require an evolution past standard link analysis.
And then Google buys Twitter and gobbles down all its tasty data directly.
I'd completely agree with that, I rarely (if ever) get the chance to post on my own blog nowadays and I think that the growth of the monster that is Twitter is going to continue at such a rate that Google (and everyone else) is not going to be able to ignore it's influence. Not saying I'm particularly happy about this situation as I like writing interesting posts, but just the way it is!
I agree with your view of the situation and love the evolution twitter is forcing on blogs. However, I don't agree with your conclusion that tweets will outrank posts. In an effort to reflect the "old blog" way of adding to the conversation (without writing a very long post here as a comment), I have written about this on my blog at lizmicik.con/blog under (tweet links & blog posts build rank together).
Liz Micik
twitter/elizam
we must agree with the fact that Twitter is "killing" the links you once had from others blogs.
However, how can the engine weight this trend? And, is 10 RT stronger than 10 people linking directly to your blog post ? how do you then detect a spam ? by analysing the Twitter account with TwiiterDecker or by the numbers of followers ?.. is Guy Kawasaki spamming?
just because people are forced to use 140 characters, therefore using tools like 'TinyUrl', will make this equation really hard for the SE.
Let see what happens, but the SE will have to make a move.
For those that don't get Twitter, consider what a great vehicle it is for chest pounding, self promotion, and vanity posts. Every time I get a new "follower" on Twitter, I speculate that they are much more interested in having me click on the button to follow them than in actually reading my random 140 character posts. And sadly, the majority of my Twitter posts could probably be classified as chest pounding, self promotion or vanity.
I think you guys are missing the point.
The power of Twitter is that it gives the 5% of society that has a real brain a vehicle to exploit the lambs of society (95%); that have been coralled into one massive, ego pumping circle jerk.
They're called "Tweetards", and they're teh awesome. Take advantage of them while you can...
PS @mozzers - Have you seen this comment? https://is.gd/qo72 This guy is freakin' brilliant! RT
Ha! Ya got me. I'm SO tempted to break out the old automatic-thumbs-down-generating URL trick. Remember that one?
That was classic.
I haven't been around that long apparently, or I missed it entirely, care to share a bit more about it?
Twitter is here to stay, though I hate to admit it.
Two reasons:
1. Too many people don't read unless absolutely necessary. (Sad, but true)
2. Those people who do read like to skim long articles. Lead me to a good blog, and I will gobble up every word.
Therefore:
Twitter does/will influence the search engines whether or not they acknowledge it.
I was about to leave a comment here, but it got too long, so I'll submit it to YOUmoz instead.
What? You mean, more than 140 charachers?
LOL! Actually, it had more to do with the quality of the content. It was too good to be a comment, but not good enough to post on my own website. YOUmoz to the rescue...
I still don't see the true usefulness of twitter... its just more like a chatroom 2.0
I'm currently not on Twitter, but this post has lead me in that direction. Twitter feels lazy, but I guess it's the cool thing to do these days.
Have a peek at the Twitter popularity contest site. Our friend, Kevin Rose from Digg, created this new portal to track top ranking twitter accounts.
www.wefollow.com
I'd like to retract my statement from 2009. It's more than just cool now :)
My thoughts - how can 140 characters be considered content. We have become so obsessed with mico-everything what happened to great writing. There is a time and place for everything, but I think Tweeting has gone overboard. There must be some balance.
Debralee
https://www.creativewebsolutions4u.com
I totally fall into the category of using twitter to share links and articles instead of using my blog. If there is a cool site that I run into and all I want to do is share it, twitter works like a charm! On the other hand, twitter helps share my own posts, too. So, I see twitter as something that helps me stay connected with my community so when I do have something to blog about, we're all still connected!
Twitter, and social media similar to it, are defenitely changing how we do things online! Would I call it cannibalism? IMO, no
Want to know how to monetize twitter? no-index.
game it out like this:
1st. you let the engines destroy a natural eco-system that allows their index to best reflect the democratic web. Blow up the linking activity of the blogoshere - with nofollow and paid link FUD.
2nd. use celebrity nacissism and voyuerism to make yourself the number one, most reliable signal.
3rd. wisper: buy me. rent me. or you cannot have me (data).
Watch how hard Google, scratch that, Yahoo, will try to buy twitter. And then watch whoever negotiates that deal the best (look for a Microsoft play here folks for. the. win.) take the web for the next 10. Where is the Google killer? Its in who gets access to twitter the fastest, and therefore builds the next gen's best quality results.
Great observations. In certain non-competitive niches people are sharing information - they're linking to their friend's blogs, they're linking to other blogs that have something to add to the conversation. Niches like "rabbits for pets" or "life in western Ohio" or others in which they're not competing for eyeballs that are going to buy something.
Other niches are really competitive. How many times would a blogger with a "make money with this gimmick" focused website link out to others that are talking about the gimmick in a little different way and that adds to the conversation? What for? They'd rather read it, and rip it off with a rewrite. Why link out?
Similarly with any other niche in which the blog owners are aware of linking strategy... seo blogs, internet marketing, just about any IT blog... I just see very few links out.
Contrast that with twitter where everyone is trying to link out to show they have some good idea what's going on in whatever niche they're trying to build a reputation in... No pagerank to lose - so everyone links out generously.
Are Twitter links any less valuable than traditional links from a blog? I'm not sure. Arguably they're MORE valuable because at least from what I've seen - they are usually awesome links! I've had a blast following links from strangers because I'm amazed at the quality of site I'm directed to as a result of Twitter links.
Here's a question... When will google start trying to understand who is who in each niche and attempt to rank them on that basis instead of inbound links or maybe not instead of but, in addition to?
Google bots can look at how many pages JoeBlo has on his site related to "personal development" if that's the niche he's in. Oh, he has 48 pages and 6,000 words about the topic. On average it's at a 6th grade reading level. He has been registered as the owner of the domain for 2 years. He has no other domains related to this niche.
Janeblo has 670 pages and 189,000 pages on the same topic. Keywords she's ranked on in this niche are much more varied and it's written at a 12th grade level. She has 2 other sites that are focused on niches that are not the same, but similar and there is some crossover. She links liberally between all of her sites where it makes sense to share the parallel information. She has owned her main site for 6 years and the other two sites for 1 year.
Now, JoeBlo has a PR4. JaneBlo has a PR 4.
JaneBlo is clearly the expert. Should she get higher rank based on all these factors? I think so.
When is Google going to start looking at the big picture - taking into account everything possible... or is it already doing that? It seems like Google is 80% inbound link focused.
Is there anything in Google Analytics' terms of service that say they can use that information to base ranking on?
There's so much info they could use... and I think inbound links are losing their effectiveness, or are bound to. Twitter seems like a great place to be right now, as does Facebook and other social media sites because Google can't ignore their relevance.
It seems that you really don't know what you're talking about.
A good start by google would be to remove the no-follow tag from twitter profile links.