According to several data analysis companies, Twitter is experiencing a significant decrease in visibility on Google.
Data from Sistrix shows that Twitter’s search visibility dropped by 32% in the US in one day.
news dash reported that Twitter lost 12-14% of its visibility in Google search results for all news queries in the US and UK.
The drop followed recent moves by Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk to limit the number of tweets users could see in an attempt to address problems with data scraping.
The situation is still developing and Twitter can recover if it takes quick steps to resolve the current issues.
Many experts call this one of the most significant self-inflicted SEO mistakes of recent times.
What happened?
To reduce data scraping, Musk announced a temporary limit on the number of tweets users could read per day.
Initially, the limits were set at 6,000 posts for verified accounts, 600 for unverified accounts, and 300 for new unverified accounts.
However, these limits were soon increased twice to 10,000, 1,000 and 500 posts.
“Our intention is to address the issue of data scraping that has been affecting the actual user experience,” Musk said in a statement. “Several hundred organizations have accessed Twitter data and we believe these measures are necessary.”
Unintended consequences
While Musk’s actions were intended to improve the user experience on Twitter, they affected the operations of Google’s search crawlers.
Tracking and crawling data are critical to how Google determines search rankings.
Google reads data from many URLs daily to keep its index up to date. The limits imposed by Musk obstruct Google’s ability to access Twitter, resulting in decreased search visibility.
As a result, Twitter content is less likely to appear in Google Search for many keywords.
A coup de grace to keyword ranking
Ongoing analysis reveals that Twitter has lost nearly 60,000 keyword rankings from the top 10 positions in Google search results, according to preliminary US market data.
Sistrix reports that Twitter has lost crucial keywords such as “ralphs”, “metropcs”, “roblox”, “reddit”, “indeed”, “white house”, “britney spears”, “steak n shake”, “kanye west ” “gm”, “lakers”, “rose”, “krispy kreme”, “colts”, “gmc”, “tennis”, “compass”, “lady”, “patriots” and “transformers”.
Twitter lost its third position to the search term “yankees,” which has a monthly click volume of 1.8 million in the US. The keyword, worth approximately 168,000 clicks per month, has now been stuck by espn.com.
After Twitter’s search visibility dropped, its competitors have been making gains.
Domains such as theguardian.com, cbssports.com, usnews.com, instagram.com, facebook.com, rottentomatoes.com, linkedin.com, spotify.com and espn.com have improved search rankings,
In a July 4 update, Sistrix noted that the losses continue, with new data indicating that Twitter’s ranking for the keyword “trump” has dropped out of the top 10.
Impact on users
For a platform like Twitter, which is intertwined with real-time news and debate, your position on Google directly affects your ability to attract users and retain casual visitors.
If not addressed quickly, the current situation could have a long-term effect on Twitter’s growth and user engagement metrics.
While users will be able to access Twitter directly, the decrease in search visibility may affect how new content is discovered.
Users who rely on Google to find tweets about specific topics, especially those associated with the missing keywords, can go elsewhere.
Potential users who find Twitter content through search engines sometimes join the platform. Reduced visibility can make Twitter appear less relevant, which could affect its growth.
The extent of the consequences of this sudden drop in search visibility is not yet understood. We can expect more data to shed light on this event in the coming days and weeks.
For now, it serves as a powerful reminder of the relationship between search engines and social media platforms and how quickly things can go wrong.
Can Twitter be recovered?
How Twitter and Google deal with this situation will determine how the social media site recovers.
Google uses complex algorithms that take into account a site’s history. Therefore, a prolonged decrease in visibility can make it difficult for Twitter to regain lost rankings even after the issues are resolved.
However, the Internet ecosystem is dynamic and resilient. If Twitter fixes the issues affecting Google’s search trackers, it could gradually get back to where it was.
To sum up
Twitter’s sharp drop in Google search visibility shows how interdependent major tech platforms have become, and how quickly unintended consequences can emerge from any company’s changes.
Keep in mind that the situation is constant and fluid. If Twitter and Google can quickly fix the root problems, Twitter can regain much of its lost search visibility and limit the impact on its business and users.
However, more prolonged visibility issues could pose greater challenges.
Featured image: rafapress/Shutterstock
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