Elon Musk’s recently imposed Twitter limits have resulted in a decreased Google search visibility, say SEO professionals.
Twitter’s recent decision to place limits on rates significantly hampers the indexing and display of tweets on Google’s search engine, thereby constricting the extent of information shared on this popular microblogging platform.
As reported by Search Engine Land, a recognized name in the web search industry, over the past few days, Google Search has discarded more than half of the indexed URLs from Twitter.
Specifically, on July 3rd, the figures revealed a striking decrease of over 60% in the number of tweets indexed by Google, plummeting from 471 million to a mere 180 million.
A day later, The Verge quoted a statement from a Google representative, acknowledging that Google’s capacity to crawl Twitter.com has been restricted, subsequently affecting the display of tweets and pages from Twitter in the search results.
SEO consultant, Glen Gabe, reported a fall in search visibility from Twitter accounts, attributing this to Google’s inability to crawl those URLs, a direct result of Twitter redirecting non-logged-in users.
Barry Schwartz, a technologist, corroborated this decline in indexed tweets through several tests of his own.
In tests conducted by Cointelegraph, Google yielded approximately 665 million results upon searching “site:twitter.com”, suggesting that the figures are indeed variable and dependent on Google’s crawlers.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s executive chairman, declared on July 2nd that the company would controversially enact temporary restrictions on the daily reading posts allowance for users, referencing excessive data scraping and system manipulation as the primary reasons.
This move was met with significant criticism from the crypto community, which heavily depends on Twitter as a means of communication and information sharing. Consequently, reduced tweet visibility on Google would also lessen the exposure of crypto-related content originating from Twitter.
In the wake of the read restrictions imposed on Twitter, its decentralized competitor, Mastodon, has reported a spike in user activity.
Simultaneously, Threads, a Twitter rival from Meta-owned Instagram, is also slated for launch this week.