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A Tweet's Effect on SEO Rankings - An Unexpected Case Study

seomoz.org

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Re: A Tweet's Effect on SEO Rankings - An Unexpected Case Study

#4
I brought this up with the founder of SEOMoz during the follow-up to an interview last night when I noticed one of my sites doing exactly the same thing -- http://bit.ly/f5iFvV -- and it's really got me perplexed.

What's happening, I think, is that different social sources are providing Google Juice with different decay rates. Which sources have which rates? Your guess is as good as anybody else's. Ugh.

I wonder how complicated the entire business of figuring out how to tell people about your startup or your web article is going to get? The trajectory isn't looking too good.

Re: A Tweet's Effect on SEO Rankings - An Unexpected Case Study

#5

I wonder what Google will do in the future to curb this from happening as they seem to crack down on everything and anything they think inflates ratings..

I think they already are doing "something". The article does note that botnet-tweeting doesn't appear to have any effect.

Whereas a tweetstorm from "real" people is probably indicative of actual (if temporary) interest, hence legitimate pagerank.

Re: A Tweet's Effect on SEO Rankings - An Unexpected Case Study

#6

I brought this up with the founder of SEOMoz during the follow-up to an interview last night when I noticed one of my sites doing exactly the same thing -- http://bit.ly/f5iFvV -- and it's really got me perplexed. What's happening, I think, is that different social sources are providing Google Juice with different decay rates. Which sources have which rates? Your guess is as good as anybody else's. Ugh. I wonder how…

I think it is more likely that a sudden twitter storm on a tail keyword triggers Query Deserves Freshness.

Example: there currently exists a bishop who will be the next pope. His web profile today is substantially smaller than BCC's, and is likely dominated by 200 word wiki articles, a page at his diocese, and perhaps some Time Magaxine profile from when there was speculation as to who would follow JP2.

His Holiness will eventually pass away, which is going to ignite an immediate Worldwide News Event that will cause query volumes for the top ten candidates to skyrocket. Google wants to return fresh results for those (e.g. not the pages currently ranking). Using Twitter to trigger QDF gets that hours before the link graph will reflect the new speculation articles' popularity, without requiring manual intervention.

This is, of douse, just one signal. Google News feeds, the query spikes, and sudden radical increased appearance of branded terms on trusted pages all point to the conclusion.

Re: A Tweet's Effect on SEO Rankings - An Unexpected Case Study

#7
post #6

I brought this up with the founder of SEOMoz during the follow-up to an interview last night when I noticed one of my sites doing exactly the same thing -- http://bit.ly/f5iFvV -- and it's really got me perplexed. What's happening, I think, is that different social sources are providing Google Juice with different decay rates. Which sources have which rates? Your guess is as good as anybody else's. Ugh. I wonder how…

I think it is more likely that a sudden twitter storm on a tail keyword triggers Query Deserves Freshness. Example: there currently exists a bishop who will be the next pope. His web profile today is substantially smaller than BCC's, and is likely dominated by 200 word wiki articles, a page at his diocese, and perhaps some Time Magaxine profile from when there was speculation as to who would follow JP2. His Holiness…

Yeah I thought about QDF, and I sincerely hope you are correct. I could swear that things like links from HN are showing the same decay thing, though, just at a different speed. There have been a couple of sites that I started from scratch and only posted over here -- they showed the same kind of peak/falloff.

Of course, it's not an either-or situation. Both could be true.

Re: A Tweet's Effect on SEO Rankings - An Unexpected Case Study

#9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more likely that a sudden twitter storm on a tail keyword triggers Query Deserves Freshness. Example: there currently exists a bishop who will be the next pope. His web profile today is substantially smaller than BCC's, and is likely dominated by 200 word wiki articles, a page at his diocese, and perhaps some Time Magaxine profile from when there was speculation as to who would follow JP2. His Holiness…

Yeah I thought about QDF, and I sincerely hope you are correct. I could swear that things like links from HN are showing the same decay thing, though, just at a different speed. There have been a couple of sites that I started from scratch and only posted over here -- they showed the same kind of peak/falloff. Of course, it's not an either-or situation. Both could be true.

So far only a week has passed and we seem to have settled into the #12 spot. But it will be really interesting to see if the ranking sticks around. Sadly with this case study being dropped into our laps we weren't set up to run it as a test and only have "after effect" data to go off of.

Re: A Tweet's Effect on SEO Rankings - An Unexpected Case Study

#10
post #2

Seems to be a fleeting effect. Impressive temporary bump though.

Time will tell if it's temporary. The thing is when content gets a lot of retweets, it means it's probably pretty link-worthy. So the tweets could have given it an initial bump, but then traditional backlinks could keep the rankings high.
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