Twitter have today removed all link juice from profile bio links and it’s fair to say this hasn’t gone down too well in the SEO industry.
The move follows Dave Naylor’s backlink tip which caused Matt Cutts to notify Twitter founder Evan Williams, appearing to recommend that hyperlinks are removed from profile bio pages.
As I wrote earlier in the week Twitter has become a very important tool in the search industry, and this began to cause controversy because many active users feel that the time and effort they have spent in building up their Twitter profiles should be rewarded with a backlink to promote their own websites.
This tweet from Sugarrae helps to show the general feeling people have about why bio links should be valued by Google:
With a good point made by Graywolf:
And another valid opinion from Rishil:
I would agree with all of the above statements and in my opinion Twitter could learn a great deal from the way Sphinn and SEOmoz reward the active members in the community. Sphinn nofollow all submission links until they hit the homepage and SEOmoz nofollow profile links until you reach 100+ user points.
What do you think, is this wrongly punishing legitimate Twitter users or is this necessary to stop spammers? And, if Google have contributed with advice about how these links are valued, should they be recommending this?
I think they have the tools to create their own algo as to allowing links should they want to – interactions, update volume, follow to follower ratio, Inbound links to profile can all be easily factored in.
I guess many in the SEO industry will have to resort to using REAL SEO techniques since the social site loopholes are being closed one by one, huh?
That’s too bad.
I’m with a comment made by Nick W. He stated something like if creating multiple profiles on sites like Twitter is what you all rely on to do well in Google, etc, then he thinks you need to think about your business as a SEO.
Many of us have been warning the industry for years they had better not be gaming the system by chasing links.
I agree with Doug’s comment overall, but such a sweeping change seems like an overreaction (fear of a ban from the big G?)
As Rishil says, they surely have the ability to reward those who genuinely contribute, the people who make their site what it is?
Cheers, Jon
I remember when myspace was the talk of town and they changed all their external links to internal links that got redirected to the external pages. Needless to say, their downfall coincided with that move. Twitter may face the same fate.