Real-Time Ranking Factors Revealed
Some comments by Amit Singhal of Google give us an interesting look into how Google calculates the ‘importance’ of Twitter messages (also called tweets) when determining ranking positions. An article quoting Amit at http://www.technologyreview.com/web/24353/page1 mentions several factors that are very similar to ‘normal’ search ranking criteria for webpages with a few key differences.
Our old friend PageRank has resurfaced when Google evaluates tweets! It is slightly different than the old PageRank formula since it is based on followers instead of links. When Person A follows Person B on Twitter… it is said that A is following B and that B has a follower. The more people that follow you, the more important your tweets become in Google’s eyes.
But it goes deeper than this! If the people following you were all just recently created and nobody is following them, they give you less importance for your ‘PageRank’ value. If the people following you are giants on Twitter and have tons of people following them, then you only need a few of these people to really boost the ranking of your tweets.
It’s not just how many people follow you… it’s about how many people follow each of the people following you. Just like the old PageRank formula for websites used to work, a few links from high PR pages are way more valuable than hundreds of links from low ranked pages. In other words, don;t go opening Twitter account just to follow your main account. It won’t work.
Bing has previously announced that they are simply using the number of followers a specific tweet author has. It’s a much simpler formula, but it can be abused by a Twitterer with lots of accounts created to specifically follow one main account.
Another factor in TweetRank is whether or not you use a hash symbol in your tweet (#). If you write your tweet and include a hash symbol followed by a word, your tweet shows up in Twitter whenever that keyword is searched for. This is excellent for boosting your Twitter traffic, but Google will be penalizing tweets with hash symbols in an effort to reduce the effectiveness of potential spam. Don’t use a hash in your tweet if you want Google to list it!
Google also uses some fancy algebra to pick out related terms amongst the millions of tweets and to group certain terms together. In laymens terms, this is how phrases like “Bill Clinton” and “Monica Lewinsky” come to be considered ‘related terms’ in the search engines. If your topic relates to a current event of some sort, it raises the value of that tweet. Just be sure that you don’t force a relationship that doesn’t really exist! Mentioning a current hurricane won’t help you to sell diamonds…
Overall, the article reinforces that Google’s use of real-time search is growing. Expect the Twitter ranking factors to change over time and expect to see Google use more news and blogs in their real-time results as time goes on.
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