Twitter blocked Google Search, not just unregistered users.
This was done after Twitter
a “feature” on Friday afternoon only to display tweets to signed-in and registered users; also, the dropped over half at Twitter right now is probably not helping. It was after Twitter had a “feature”, on Friday, that only displayed tweets for signed-in or registered users. Also, the current added of Twitter is not helping. That is a 62% drop in index saturation by Google of Twitter.com.throttling going onIndex count dropping.
On the Friday after Twitter banned unregistered users for seeing public tweets I
a site command on Google Search for Twitter. While we all know Google site commands are by far not accurate, the downward trend of indexed URLs is very clear.Here is that screenshot showing 471 million results in Google’s index from Twitter.com:took a screenshotI did the same site command right before writing this story and I now see 180 million results in Google’s index from Twitter.com:
Don’t trust the site command? Glenn Gabe shared a
on Twitter of third-party tool, Semrush, showing Twitter’s visibility dropping in Google Search:
Firehose. Let’s not overlook that Google Search still shows new tweets coming from Twitter. Google has had a long-standing agreement with Twitter to use its firehose. This is why you may still see Twitter’s carousel when doing some Google Searches. Here’s what it can look like. screenshotBut it seems that the old tweets are slowly disappearing from the Google core web search index. This means that Twitter will have less visibility in Google Search. It also means less access for journalists and searchers to find content on Twitter, and overall, less advertising impressions.
If your brand relies heavily on Twitter, the visibility of those tweets in Google Search may be affected, especially if they are older tweets. It is not clear if Twitter will reverse this decision, or use the supported markup to index paywalled content. Right Now, Twitter is a bit of mess for various reasons.