this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Google has reportedly removed much of Twitter's links from its search results after the social network's owner Elon Musk announced reading tweets would be limited.

Search Engine Roundtable found that Google had removed 52% of Twitter links since the crackdown began last week. Twitter now blocks users who are not logged in and sets limits on reading tweets.

According to Barry Schwartz, Google reported 471 million Twitter URLs as of Friday. But by Monday morning, that number had plummeted to 227 million.

"For normal indexing of these Twitter URLs, it seems like these tweets are dropping out of the sky," Schwartz wrote.

Platformer reported last month that Twitter refused to pay its bill for Google Cloud services.

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[–] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Elon going to complain about another conspiracy going on while in reality it's just that when crawlers are not able to open a certain URL they simply assume that the page doesn't exist anymore. Google certainly didn't "retaliate", bots simply couldn't find those pages anymore.

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The headline is actually wrong. Google did not do anything to Twitter. Twitter fucked up their own SEO by removing access to its content.

[–] BrainisfineIthink@lemmy.one 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is correct.

[–] Instigate@aussie.zone 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's a pretty easy and reasonable conclusion to come to if you think about if for more than five seconds. I'm not sure Elon has any toes left after he keeps shooting himself in the feet.

[–] bingbong@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The latest in a seemingly never-ending series of self-owns. Apart from the stress it must put on their devs, it's been entertaining

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[–] coffeetest@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Crawl issues I am sure but also user experience issues. Google is sensitive to sending visitors to sites where metrics indicate users do not, like bounce rates etc. I don't use twt but if it is the case you have the be logged in to see anything now, a non-logged in user will click a link from Google hit a login page, and use the back button. I would assume Google will see that as a bad search result and use it less.

[–] cousinofjah@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wonder if Google prioritized recrawling all those Twitter links.

[–] Pseu@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

If I were making a web crawler, I would make it so that if a crawler finds a domain that appears to have changed dramatically or gone offline it will re-crawl the domain and flag already-crawled pages as potentially obsolete.

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[–] Tygr@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Elon, please buy Reddit and repeat your amazing ideas over there. You are so smart.

[–] EuphoricPenguin22@normalcity.life 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Spez is already doing his best work to fuck over the platform. Are you certain Elon could do any better?

[–] divingaround@mander.xyz 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Spez already said he admires how Elon is running Twitter.

The best part is that Elon is proving to be a pro at losing money left and right while simultaneously inventing new ways to make a social media platform suck to use.

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[–] assembly@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn’t sound like retaliation to me, it sounds like their scheduled web crawlers are finding that content they used to index is now no longer viewable and this removed from search results. Pretty standard. My guess is that there were 400 million URLs listed and as the crawler uncovers that they are no longer available, that number will keep dropping to reflect only content publicly viewable. If only 500 URLs are now publicly viewable (without logins) then that’s what they will index. Google isn’t a search engine for private companies (unless you pay for the service) they are a public search engine so they make an effort to ensure that only public information is indexed. Some folk game the system (like the old expertsexchange.com) but sooner or later google drops the hammer.

[–] VanillaGorilla@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

God, I hated expert sexchange so much. It was a blessing when stack overflow started.

[–] detwaft@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I’m only an amateur but I’m happy to give it a go

[–] Idefinitelydonotknow@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I am genuinely curious. What's the role of the new CEO if this turd keeps doing everything he can to burn this ish to the ground?

[–] billiam0202@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ever heard of the glass cliff? You might even see a name or two on that list that you recognize.

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[–] agoramachina@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gotta have someone to push off the glass cliff

[–] Deez@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for sharing, I hadn’t heard of that expression or phenomenon.

[–] IlllIIIlllIlllI@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Takina_sOldPairTM@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

And Tiktok. And Quora.

[–] drathvedro@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Good. Hopefully they remove links to pinterest, quora and facebook too while they'reat it.

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[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Twitter was an important unifying communications tool during the Arab Spring. The Arab spring was a threat to biz as usual in places like Saudi Arabia. The second largest investor in Twitter is Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered a journalist from the US, more or less in plain sight. Elon is now killing and dismembering Twitter in plain sight to limit its power as a unifying tool that stands as a demonstrable, active threat to capitalism and oligarchs around the world.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires. It's part of why spez is trying to tank Reddit. Remember how dangerous Reddit was to capitalism's status quo around the time of GME/Robinhood/Antiwork recently.

The specific moment we're in right now is meant to shatter consolidated organizing power on Reddit as we splinter into several smaller alternative platforms (or for some, disconnect entirely). Not saying we shouldn't be in Lemmy, but calling out the larger reality of the moment.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires.

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[–] bluestribute@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Has anyone noticed too that if you put AI Blockers on your website Google delists it from their search?

[–] raunz@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Can I please get this guy's face off my front page? ._.

[–] Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev 1 points 1 year ago

a part of me wants this to get worse so that people finally realize elon is insane once and for all

[–] graphite@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

decimates

Twitter absolutely DESTROYED by RATE LIMITING and ELON

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Um actually 🤓 decimating it would be 47 million links 🤓 not 227 million

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Um actually a word's etymology does not define its modern usage. 🤓

[–] Bobsyouruncle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It does if people use it correctly

[–] graphite@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

You do realize that there are multiple definitions for the word "decimate", yes?

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