Twitter’s organic search traffic on desktop is up 20% in the six months since Google started reindexing tweets in real-time. According to the SimilarWeb study, that equates to an extra 35 million monthly visits.
This past Summer, Google had reportedly been indexing just over 3% of all public tweets, but apparently that was enough to create significant waves of search traffic.
SimilarWeb reports that the largest increase in growth was seen between June and July. During that time there was a 14% increase in desktop searches, equalling roughly 25 million visits.
What’s more is that there’s an increase of people staying on Twitter after landing on it from Google search. According to the study, Twitter’s desktop bounce rate decreased 6.5% in the last 4 months.
It’s no surprise that the types of searches driving traffic to Twitter are those involving brand names or names of people.
Brand and people searches are the types of queries that would typically trigger a Twitter stream in Google search.
You’re unlikely to see tweets in search results for searches like “what’s the best way to cook bacon”, unless for some reason it was trending that day.
In testing, Twitter streams will most often be indexed underneath the company website — placing it ahead of other Google properties like News and YouTube.
What does this all mean?
Numbers going up always looks good on paper, but what difference does it make if Twitter is getting more traffic?
Well, for one, it gets more eyes on your tweets when people search for your name or your company’s name.
In addition, depending on the content of your tweets, a greater Twitter presence in Google could lead to:
- More traffic to your website
- More sales
- More followers
- More retweets & shares
Of course, this all depends on if your Twitter accounts are being indexed. Search for your name or your company name right now and see what comes up.
If you don’t see your Twitter feed above the fold, it could be because you’re not active enough compared to the counts that are getting indexed.
One thing for sure is that this is not leading to an increase in people joining Twitter — which was evident in yesterday’s earnings call. Twitter’s monthly active users only rose by 3 million in Q3.
While Twitter’s deal with Google has not led to an uptick in business just yet, it is leading to more traffic, which could potentially be a huge benefit to users.
It will be interesting to follow this over the next few months and seeing how an increase in Twitter referral traffic helps businesses.
Image Credit: SimilarWeb / Used with Permission
Featured Image Credit: 1000 Words / Shutterstock.com
