Darren Rowse has a post calling Twitter out for “selling links” today and suggests they might be at risk of a Google penalty.
On the site it links to (Current.com) it says that Current and Twitter have ‘teamed up’ – so it looks like some kind of ‘partnership’ but that doesn’t really explain it fully.
Now I’ve got nothing against Twitter monetizing with advertising, but I’d love for them to disclose whether that is actually an ad or not. If it is – they might want to ‘nofollow’ it or they might just find themselves penalized by Google for trying to game them (or for helping someone else game them at least).
In over 40 comments at Problogger everybody has blindly agreed with Darren. Nobody has pointed out that these links only show to logged in users. This search shows that the only mentions of the linked phrase are in status updates – Google never sees the actual advert.
Unless Google has set up a Twitter account and started logging in to the site then Twitter isn’t at risk one little bit.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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Good catch there Patrick.
I logged out to confirm and check. There is no link in the sidebar when i log out and see. So its only for registered users.
*puts away pitchfork*
I don’t find anything wrong with what Twitter does to monetize their business model as long as they classify to users what a sponsor/partners links. In this case, they should have tagged a nofollow to the link..may be..?
good call! Actually someone from Twitter just left a comment on the post clarifying it all too.
Re: Twitter Selling Links
I doubt they will ever resort to this.
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