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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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[-] drathvedro@lemm.ee 131 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Knightfox@lemmy.one 26 points 1 year ago

Once upon a time Quora had reasonably accessible information. Now I find it nearly unusable and only go there as a last desperate effort which is generally fruitless. Pinterest is annoying, but generally you can still view some content. What's annoying is trying to download, copy, or isolate content there. If all you want to do is view an image, Google can typically still pull the image out and make it viewable from the search. The problem only arises if you try to go in and see the original.

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[-] Zithero@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Please remove Quora links...

Every time I click a Quora link it takes me to a completely unrelated question to the one I clicked on.

I swear that site is doing this deliberately to make it seem like it has more traffic than it does.

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[-] IlllIIIlllIlllI@programming.dev 82 points 1 year ago
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[-] TicklishRocket@lemmy.world 77 points 1 year ago

It's funny how Spez idolizes a guy who doesn't pay his bills. It's also funny watching the hate pplatform Twitter get absolutely destroyed by its owner. The internet in 2023 is a wild and crazily changing place.

[-] riodoro1@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

At this point I’m half convinced spez was such an asshole to Reddits users because of how the community turned on his idol elon. I remember not longer than two years ago Reddit was basically musk circlejerk but this genius fucked up even that.

[-] bloopernova@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago

I think it's even stupider than that. Spez didn't realize he pissed off the Apollo dev, and the shock of that first Apollo post made him ashamed and angry. He's kept a lot of vitriol aimed at the Apollo dev. Spez fucked reddit because he got mad.

[-] Redtitwhore@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

That was just the tipping point. Reddit has been in a decline for a few years but we were all like frogs in boiling water but we accepted it because we didn't know where else to go. RIF shutting down forced my hand and now I'm here. Hopefully to stay.

[-] solarzones@programming.dev 22 points 1 year ago

And for the better too. People will come to realize that there are better ways to socialize on the internet.

[-] overlordror@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

I can't believe how fast the fediverse is growing thanks to both reddit and Twitter simultaneously imploding. I honestly welcome it, despite the growing pains this feels more like early 2000s reddit than the modern version ever did.

Can't wait for genZ to welcome the return of spaces that aren't optimized for monetization over communication first.

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[-] irkli@lemmy.world 75 points 1 year ago

And this is interesting..
https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/110657916419002616

"rodhilton Rod Hilton @rodhilton@mastodon.social I have some insider knowledge here that I wanted to share.

This is not happening because Google scrapes Twitter and is now unable to. Google has been a paying customer (with a special negotiated rate) of the Firehose API for nearly a decade. Presumably, that deal was still in effect, barring API rate changes having an impact.

So this decision is solely because the results can no longer be viewed by non-logged-in users.

https://universeodon.com/@TomWellborn/

[-] obinice@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago

Yeah, if the content is walled off from the public, there's not much point indexing it

It's a shame it's come to this, but there are literal crazy people at the helm over at Twitter...

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[-] Shikadi@wirebase.org 15 points 1 year ago

Great now can they remove Pinterest too please??

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[-] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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 64 points 1 year ago

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 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is correct.

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[-] Tygr@lemmy.world 51 points 1 year ago

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

[-] EuphoricPenguin22@normalcity.life 15 points 1 year ago

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

[-] divingaround@mander.xyz 15 points 1 year ago

Spez already said he admires how Elon is running Twitter.

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[-] Antaeus@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago

Very good. An evil corporation doing evil things to an evil agenda.

[-] MSids@lemmy.sdf.org 49 points 1 year ago

I mean, is it evil? Seems like removing results that can't be seen without a login might make sense. Google has plenty of faults but I don't know if this is one of them

[-] Kolrami@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Did Pinterest used to require logins to see their images? I remember I used to get annoyed when search results directed me to that site

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[-] kennydidwhat@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

The details are unclear as to why these links were removed. Opining on Alphabet's morals at this point is premature.

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[-] IgotGrapes@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

Elon's goal is to destroy twitter, per his wife.

[-] Space_Racer@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

You're gonna have to be more specific. Which wife?

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[-] PhoenxBlue@lemmy.ca 33 points 1 year ago

Can someone please ELI5 what his end game is? I refuse to pay attention to twitter, but Elon, he's crazy.

[-] DevCat@lemmy.world 85 points 1 year ago

You are assuming he has one. Before he overpaid for Twitter, he probably thought he would turn it into a successful version of TruthSocial. Then reality came knocking. Now, he may have no idea what he's going to do.

When you were a kid, did you ever take apart an old vacuum cleaner or power tool, thinking "I'm going to make something great out of this"? Then, when you had all the pieces lying around you, you wondered why you even started because you have no idea what you are going to do now? That may be Elon at the moment. He's looking at the parts of his mom's treasured vacuum cleaner, and wondering how he can blame it on the brother his parents never gave him.

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[-] darkevilmac@vlemmy.net 27 points 1 year ago

I feel like Google is going to have to find a way to effectively index federated content at some point. The only way to really get human information is from sites like Reddit and Twitter. And both of those platforms seem to be dedicated to completely imploding at the moment.

[-] FlagonOfMe@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 year ago

There's nothing about the content being federated that makes it hard or impossible to index. Each instance is just a website with a public webpage that a bot can read. That all a search engine needs to index it. The worst case scenario is the bot will find the same content on multiple instances.

I did read that the website is loaded entirely through JavaScript and that maybe the Google bot doesn't execute JavaScript so can't see the text. I don't know if that's still a problem in 2023, though.

This article says it's not a problem, but I didn't read past the tl;dr, so maybe there's a caveat. Like maybe it has to use a popular framework like React or something to work.

https://searchengineland.com/tested-googlebot-crawls-javascript-heres-learned-220157

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[-] lightrush@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 year ago
[-] varsock@programming.dev 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

duckduckgo (who uses Microsoft's index I believe) is able to find Lemmy instances already.

problem is since every instance has its own domain you cannot search all of Lemmy or the more obscure fediverse. lemmy.world, beehaw.org, programming.dev are all different "websites".

I append "reddit" to my query when I want to search reddit for a human answer to a question. Can't do that with Lemmy, unless the instance is branded as Lemmy.

Unless there will be an org or volunteers that indexes federated instances and makes them available to search engines to they can be differentiated, finding stuff in the fediverse might be difficult...

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[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wait... so google can just do that? Guess Pinterest bought the premium cloud services and never misses a payment. And tips.

[-] Balinares@pawb.social 63 points 1 year ago

Probably it's just that the Google crawlers are not being served Twitter content, since Twitter now requires a logged in account. If so the number of indexed tweets should keep dwindling as they expire from the Google index, I imagine. We'll see.

[-] jayrodtheoldbod@midwest.social 24 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I don't know what else they're gonna do. People are already getting pretty fed up with the search results from their core product, the bitching started years ago and it's starting to get pretty loud, with power users of search becoming determined to find a better solution when they can. Don't think Google doesn't hear such things, or isn't aware of them.

So if search starts returning a bunch of results that are supposed to be Tweets but people keep hitting login paywalls, that just makes Google look bad. There's already widely circulated plugins - which Google knows about because they're getting installed on Chromium browsers - to automatically block Pinterest results, people were getting fed up with "fake" image results that weren't usable. The value proposition of what is still their primary business is under attack and can't stand more erosion of trust.

Maybe it looks like retaliation for Musk not paying his bills, but it probably isn't, it's just more fallout from Musk's actions.

[-] Cabrio@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The Google search result issue came to a head because of the reddit debacle. With the protest sending so many core subs private it immediately killed any seo those subs had on google search. Even Google made the announcement acknowledging that the reddit protest had ruined search results with most of one of the largest and most visited websites suddenly not being searchable.

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say the trouble at reddit is the first thing to put fire under Googles feet in a long time and now the tech giant's eye is focused back on their main product for generating ad revenue.

So with Elon putting limits on accessibility for his site there is zero chance of Google being able to properly index and cache twitter content, I'd even bet most of the moderation was done by automated indexing systems that could no longer access content.

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[-] raunz@mander.xyz 25 points 1 year ago

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

[-] jtk@lemmy.sdf.org 24 points 1 year ago

People with power shouldn't be allowed any control over platforms that give power to "the people". I believe this is all intentional. If it was just Twitter, or just Reddit, or just 1 TV network, I wouldn't think that but they're sabotaging all the mainstream platforms at once and making it incredibly obvious. They're trying to collapse our means of communication ahead of 2024.

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[-] assembly@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] graphite@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

decimates

Twitter absolutely DESTROYED by RATE LIMITING and ELON

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[-] Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev 14 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

[-] macintosh@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago
[-] DevCat@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Generous of you to believe he's thought that far ahead.

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[-] Maul535@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

One of my coworkers absolutely loves Musk and I can't understand why... The guy's a joke. I feel like people think Musk is smart just because he's eccentric and has money, I hope eventually everyone comes to see just how normally intelligent he actually is

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[-] Pissy_Badger@pawb.social 12 points 1 year ago

That post image.

Is it just me, or is Elon looking more and more like a movie villain as time goes by?

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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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