Google’s Twitter Algorithm 2009 Twitter Algo

Google’s Twitter Algorithm 2009

How will Google incorporate live twitter updates into their search algorithm?

News recently came out that Google and Bing will be featuring live twitter updates into their search results. The big question here for SEO’s is how they will incorporate twitter into their algorithms. In order to shed some light on the potential of Google’s Twitter Algorithm, I’ve looked at how different Twitter grader algorithms work and any additions to these that we might see go live.

One of the more popular site’s out there that will rank your Twitter profile is the Twitter Grader by the guys over at Hubspot. Now while I wouldn’t suggest you optimize your Twitter profile for this tool, it is still useful for gauging success. Over on their blog, Hubspot details what factors are part of their Twitter Grader’s algorithm. Here’s a list of potential factors in the Google Twitter Algorithm:

1. Number of Followers: More followers leads to a higher Twitter Grade (all other things being equal). It is easy to game this (more on this in a later post) but never the less it is an important piece of the algorithm.

2. Power of Followers: The more followers the people following you have, the better. This is a core part of Hubspot’s algorithm and will surely be part of the Google and Bing Twitter Algorithms as well.

3. Updates: More updates generally leads to a higher grade — within reason. This is risky and potentially could reward twitter spam.

4. Update Recency: Users that are more current (i.e. time elapsed since last tweet is low) generally get higher grades.

5. Follower/Following Ratio: The higher this ratio, the better. The weight of this factor decreases as the user excels in other areas of the algorithm (so, once a user gets to a high level of followers or a high level of engagement, the Follower/Following ratio counts less).

6. Engagement: The more retweets a user receives, the higher their grade. This makes sense since the more references their are to your profile, the more powerful it potentially is. Further, the value of the engagement is higher based on who is being engaged. If a user with a very high Twitter Grade retweets, it counts more than if a spammy account with a very low grade retweets.

Of these 6 core Twitter metrics, some will be more useful than others. I think the most important of these are engagement and power of followers. Retweets will most likely turn into the equivalent of “inbound links” for normal sites. Of the 6 above, update frequency will be counted the least as it will be extremely hard to control spam if this is a major factor.

Aside from these six metrics their are others that will most likely surface when Google and Bing launch their Twitter algorithms. Two factors I would specifically like to touch on are relevancy and lists.

Relevancy: Relevancy is a huge part of Google’s current algorithm and it only makes sense that it will be included in the Twitter algorithm. I foresee relevancy factoring in like this: What is the target profile tweeting about? This will involve monitoring keyword density on all profiles. Google will then look at your followers. Is their “Tweet Density” similar to yours? Google’s algorithm will reward people for having followers which are relevant. If tweet a lot about SEO and have 600 followers yet 400 of those followers tweet mostly about furniture, the algorithm would reflect that.

Lists: Lists are a relatively new feature that most people don’t know what to make of. I’m not sure how it will be incorporated, but it will be. Here are some potential ways this could happen: A list to follower ratio. This would record how many people following you have added you to a list. I believe this metric has some serious value. Another possibility could be a simple count of how many lists you’re on, however, by itself, I don’t believe that metric adds much value.

It will be interesting to see how Google’s Twitter Algorithm turns out. I’m sure the obvious factors might change before this is truly incorporated into the engines. If you have any opinions about which factors will be weighed more heavily than others, please post a comment! With our minds combined, we might end up getting pretty close!