The Adido Digital Blog

After the initial announcement from Bing that they would be introducing Twitter results to its search engine results, Google were quick to follow with the same breaking news.

The announcement was coined as to be Twitter’s saviour with the multi-billion dollar deal meaning that Twitter seems to be around for the long haul. Google launched the Twitter search result function on the 8th of December 2009 which was followed by a lot of interest and hype, especially within the online marketing and particularly the SEO industry. Google stated that they;


“believed search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data”

And now six weeks down the line it is interesting to see whether this statement is still relevant and whether the integration has been seen as beneficial.

So how will the Twitter integration be useful to users?

With Google often being the first turning point for most Internet users when they are searching for something. The integration of this relatively new and somewhat niche technology could cause confusion for most average users.

Google has changed continually since its launch and most notably in recent years with the Universal search to integrate images, maps, product listings, videos and news to name just a few, but have always kept a simple clean interface. Will this new focus on real time results prove to be too much for the ‘average Joe’?

Despite these reservations many believed that as the Twitter results will only be displayed when the search term deems them to be applicable (and ‘enhancing’ to the results), this integration will be more of a help than a hindrance. Twitter results are shown in searches where real time information might be more useful than historical results, such as for up to date information on breaking news, sport, weather conditions and possibly traffic updates.

With Bing we have seen the implementation of a tweet only search page whereas Google has chosen to integrate relevant tweets into the first results page within their own self contained box.



The placement of this box often differs with the search query and it is possible that this is attributed to;

1. Relevance of live feeds to search query
2. How recent the tweets are
3. Activity – a subject highly tweeted on in a short amount of time.


Although after searching term’s which I thought would bring up results with Twitter integration such as; today’s weather, road conditions, the word Twitter itself, SEO, ‘Twitter and Google integration’ and around ten more, my Google page was void of any real time Twitter results.

After going to Twitter and searching for one of today’s trending subjects then searching for it on Google, low and behold the mysterious tweet search box appeared. It seems strange that Google would only want to show tweet results that are already trending and prevalent on Twitter itself. Surely it could be said that those that would be interested in the integrated tweet results would be those that had tweeted them or been aware of the Twitter trends in the first place?

And why not show tweet results on other subjects or even on the subject of the Google and Twitter integration itself? Perhaps it is because it has happened in the past. It also seems that Google has scaled back how many search terms use live stream tweets since the launch, where even the search term ‘lights’ was resulting in a tweet box. This would suggest that even Google isn’t sure about the best way to use this data yet and they themselves are experimenting with different ways of implementing this integration to get the best end result for their users.


Google, Twitter and SEO – a happy friendship?

Short of Google creating their own live stream network, without this partnership with Twitter it could be argued that Google would have been left in the dust of Bing in the real time search world (ok possibly somewhat of an exaggeration there!). With advances in the huge adoption of social networks for both networking and socialising and Google’s failed attempts at being a part of this (despite purchasing Jaiku and internally developing Orkut), it seems that this partnership with Twitter is beneficial for both the Internet giants and not just, as suggested, in securing Twitters place in the online world.

So how can we use this for SEO?

Well if your search term has a tweet box you’re in luck. And if your tweet shows, it is a sure fire way to get a quick ranking, but for how long and at what value? It may be argued that as of yet the value of tweets ranking in Google for SEO purposes are minimal and cannot be measured and that with a rolling tweet box in which tweets change constantly the value if any may not be worthwhile. Whether Google ranks tweets like this in the future remains to be seen.

Google ranking factors for twitter

The integration of Twitter and Google has set many tongues wagging in the SEO industry. Here are just some possible factors that could be affecting ranking of tweets:

1) Reputable followers
2) Unique Content – Beware the ‘hashtag’, it’s possible these could be viewed as spam
3) Ratio between followed and following
4) Fresh Content – Regular and prominent tweeters
5) ‘Domain’ age – age of Twitter account
6) Experts – consistency throughout Twitter account and Tweets
7) Re-tweets – amount of re-tweets an account has received

These factors have been adapted from those that many SEO’s will be familiar with and implement to achieve normal Google rankings, but as with these, only time will tell how important ranking tweets will be within SEO and whether the factors suggested above could aid in getting your tweet to show.

If you’ve got any thoughts, please share them with us below.