I noticed a couple of strange things happening in Twitter. Perhaps you can help figure out what's going on, and we can even come up with ways to make the most out of the situation.

I conducted an experiment where I posted a link in a "Tweet" (post made in Twitter). Within 15 seconds, someone or something from Microsoft follows the link. But the link was not clicked on in the Twitter post. Instead, it was as if the URL was copy/pasted, and then directly visited.

Question #1: What page is Microsoft monitoring over there in Twitter?

After about three minutes from the time I posted the Tweet, I deleted the Tweet. A review of my Twitter archive shows that the Tweet no longer appears. The weird thing is, after seven hours, a Googlebot crawls the link that was shown in the previously deleted Tweet.

Question #2: Where did Googlebot see the link?

What does the experiment reveal? This shows that even if Twitter tags the links that appear in Tweets as "nofollow", some things will still follow those links. Yes, even a Googlebot.

If you're after increased traffic to your site with the help of Twitter, here's what I found:

Twitterers will see your link while they view their Twitter "home" page. Some of them will even take the time to search the previous pages (as far back as 5 pages ago), especially if they are following a lot of people.

If you want even more traffic, though, you'll need to be charming and interesting enough so that people who are still new to Twitter will want to follow you. If they are still new, they're probably just following a few Twitterers at the moment.

And that improves the visibility of your Tweets.

Imagine what would happen if someone is following you, and 1234 others. What if someone else is following you, and 9 others?

So have fun with Twitter. Be charming, be interesting, be follow-able, make lots of friends. Sometimes, sprinkle some useful links in your Tweets, and watch your traffic grow.

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"Twitter Twilight Zone"
First Posted: August 26, 2007 | Filed in: Web Traffic

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