Twitter Accounts are beating my domains, is it fair?

You're now confirming my feeling that twitter is 99% spim (IM spam)

I suspect that the ranking disparity will be a passing phenomenon that will get fixed. After all, ranking meaningless 140 character random blurts above solid content seems to contradict the claim that Google values content. However, the tweets are "fresh and new", how often are you updating the content of your site?

Two things

- sounds like you need to improve your on site SEO
- reserve twitter usernames early for domains you are going to develop (or think you might develop) and if their not available get a twitter handle with the similar keywords and add your URL to that account

I think you're thread title is funny. Life is not fair, especially online

Learn SEO?

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There is no rhyme or reason of how Google ranks sites; I have seen one-page sites with nothing but a caption and a photo ranking number one.

See Obama President (no quotes).

This site always (at least for me) shows up on page 1, sometimes even #1:

IsObamaPresident.com

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Because my domains are hosting websites with serious focus on content, i would tend to think that i am more conscious about SEO, compared to a Twitter guy who is just randomly blurting 140 characters about his weekend stay at grandmas house.

I'm not even sure people would even think about SEO when they tweet whatever comes out of their minds. And yet.... Google thinks that any page that matches "Twitter.com" gets plus 20 points in ranking.

And i'm sure Backlinks will count if 100 friends are following your garbage tweets for the heck of it.

The beauty of Twitter, is you rank on top of Google. And then you can use that Twitter profile to mention a link to your "real" domain address. So your Twitter profile becomes a "Doorway" to a website that is not even ranking well.

So perhaps one should really reg a Twitter version of domains you are developing.

Just a heads up, which some might already do or know:

some of these twitter names get taken and not used, twitter is starting to release some. I have a business domain and recently got my DBA. The twitter name was taken a while back, and I rechecked it recently and it was "suspended". I had been eyeing it for a while and it was never really used. I emailed twitter support and they released it to me.

Google's goal is to deliver the most desirable page in the #1 spot. If no sites are clearly deserving of this spot, expect to see a social media result there. This is 2011. If they are unsure of who should be #1, then a Twitter account is a pretty good bet.

The only solution is to improve the quality of content on your site.

So far, my domain iowadawg.com is right ahead of my twitter page, twitter.com/iowadawg

I am not complaining.

DubDubDubDot said:

Google's goal is to deliver the most desirable page in the #1 spot. If no sites are clearly deserving of this spot

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That's presuming the non-Twitter domain is a trash website. Your argument would have been easy to understand.

However, we are talking about a website with SOLID content.... versus a Twitter account blurting nothing but random, personal, non-keyword rich tweets.

And besides, even if my domain would rank No.1, do you think it's still fair that the Twitter Account would rank No.2 effectively bypassing dozens of other websites????? And all that ranking advantage, based mainly on random tweets.

I don't think when you sign-up for an Account with Twitter, you are required to Tweet "useful" content. Google switches off the "content quality" criteria when it comes to Twitter domain profiles.

DubDubDubDot said:

The only solution is to improve the quality of content on your site.

Click to expand...

So, domain owners will have to work harder to improve content quality....... while Twitter owners just continue to chat tweets and still rank high.

My Google+ account with the same name beats EVERYTHING!!!

I second what Acidz had to say about Twitter user names. The name of my indie radio station was taken on Twitter a few years back & had only one tweet on it.

The name was inactive so I e-mailed Twitter & explained I own the rights to the name as it is my brand & such. They released the name to me without any issues. Now if only Youtube were as flexible.

HBK216 said:

The name was inactive so I e-mailed Twitter & explained I own the rights to the name as it is my brand & such. They released the name to me without any issues.

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That's it? Just an email and they immediately agreed you are the rightful owner?

Can Tweeter owners have any protection against reverse hijacking attempts as well?

I've seen posts on the freelancer forums, where people are paying others just to be their fake friends in their social networks... make their sites look busy.

alien51 said:

That's it? Just an email and they immediately agreed you are the rightful owner?

Can Tweeter owners have any protection against reverse hijacking attempts as well?

I've seen posts on the freelancer forums, where people are paying others just to be their fake friends in their social networks... make their sites look busy.

Click to expand...

It isn't that easy, and yes there is protection. You can't just "hijack" any twitter account you want. Also, buying "friends", "twitter followers", or Facebook likes isn't anything new. . .

BookWorm

nicedomains said:

Two things

- sounds like you need to improve your on site SEO
- reserve twitter usernames early for domains you are going to develop (or think you might develop) and if their not available get a twitter handle with the similar keywords and add your URL to that account

I think you're thread title is funny. Life is not fair, especially online

Click to expand...

This. Google likes to mix it some, especially nowadays with social this, social that. Every site I develop, I get a Twitter account for that site. And it's a good idea for many reasons. I have situations for some searches where both my site and the Twitter account rank on page 1. I rather have that Twitter ranking than one of my competitors. Also, for traffic. Whether somebody searches on Twitter, or somebody (like press) sees a tweet and writes an article, somebody sees a tweet and blogs about it (traffic and possible 1 way link in), somebody likes your tweet and retweets and so forth. There is one site where I have the main site, the Twitter account, a hub page, a Squidoo lens, all 4 on the first 2 pages. Dominate the niche.

JB Lions said:

Every site I develop, I get a Twitter account for that site........ There is one site where I have the main site, the Twitter account, a hub page, a Squidoo lens, all 4 on the first 2 pages. Dominate the niche.

Click to expand...

I am not a Tweety person, so i'm a little late when it comes to this thing. I was just shocked at how fast Tweeter profiles get ranked on Google Search for nothing but garbage tweets.

So if this is how it is, then it makes sense to use Tweeter profiles as "free doorways" to your own domain/websites.

I've read the Tweeter Rules, and it says there that as long as your Tweeter Username matches with the URL domain where your tweeter is pointing to, then you are legit owner.

Just make sure you tweet once in a while, just to avoid appearing like a tweeter squatter.

Also, you have - twitter.com/whatever but you can make your "name" the keywords you're targetting. I usually have it twitter.com/mysite and pick whatever I'm targetting as my name.

^ Good catch. That proved to be similar to the "Title" string on websites, which Google also matches with search queries.

When I work on my own sites or a customers site, we register every social media outlet with the names, to make sure we're on the list. Currently my twitter sits right below the site itself on google for my latest design, which is perfectly fine for me

It isn't fair, but it appears more relevance is being given to twitter, and other social sites, but that can change. As "nicedomains" said it's best to plan ahead and claim the twitter accounts, facebook etc if you're going to be sticking with the name long-term.

I just want to update this thread to report that Google appears to have changed its ranking algo when it comes to Twitter Account names.

My competitor who snatched the Twitter name version of my .COM domain, is now kicked down the Google search order by an amazing 12 notches. He is no longer on P1. Previously, his twitter account ranked on top. I checked his twitter and his account is still actively tweeting with about 3 dozen followers, and yet he still get booted down from search.

Perhaps it appears that unless your Twitter is really trending very strongly, it is now more difficult to rank on top of Google?

My .COM domain is now back on top as No.1, eventhough i have never made any SEO changes or whatsoever.

Interesting, it would seem that Google are constantly updating their search algorithms to keep results relevant.

apparently, google are going to stop indexting twitter as they find the hash tags annoying

Google stopped pushing Twitter (and FB) a couple of months ago when they started heavily favoring G+ pages. There was a big uproar about it, especially from Twitter (although I believe it was their decision to let their agreement with Google expire a few months earlier.)

You may want to defensively get on G+.