This is a guest post by AJ Vaynerchuk.
Introduction
Using Shoemoney’s SERPS script, I took the time to see where Twitter and Facebook rank in Google for some popular names in our industry. The following list will show you a name, where Twitter ranks in Google for the search of the name, and Facebook’s ranking for the same term. The results are based on a random assortment of 50:
* The highlighted cell shows which ranking is best.
| Name | ||
|---|---|---|
| Kevin Rose | 12 | 68 |
| Michael Arrington | 4 | 28 |
| Allen Stern | 5 | 14 |
| Guy Kawasaki | 5 | n/a |
| John Gruber | 3 | n/a |
| Gary Vaynerchuk | 5 | 24 |
| Veronica Belmont | 7 | 32 |
| Darren Rowse | 3 | 20 |
| AJ Vaynerchuk | 2 | 28 |
| Robert Scoble | 5 | 29 |
| Jason Calacanis | 3 | n/a |
| iJustine | 6 | 47 |
| Anil Dash | 5 | 39 |
| Scott Beale | 4 | 15 |
| Alex Hillman | 3 | 11 |
| Tara Hunt | 4 | 25 |
| Leo Laporte | 6 | 42 |
| Cali Lewis | 5 | n/a |
| Ze Frank | 7 | n/a |
| Chris Brogan | 3 | 25 |
| Loic Le Meur | 3 | n/a |
| Pete Cashmore | 8 | 4 |
| Tantek Çelik | 6 | n/a |
| Nick O’neill | 4 | 3 |
| Chris Messina | 4 | 31 |
| Name | ||
|---|---|---|
| Dan Cederholm | 8 | n/a |
| Jeff Pulver | 6 | 4 |
| Ariel Waldman | 2 | 27 |
| Stephanie Agresta | 3 | 7 |
| Mark Wielgus | 6 | 5 |
| Fred Wilson | 9 | 58 |
| Michael Galpert | 10 | n/a |
| Frank Gruber | 9 | 29 |
| Ryan Carson | 11 | 59 |
| Mel Kirk | 3 | n/a |
| Bryan Thatcher | 6 | 7 |
| Jim Louderback | 12 | n/a |
| Matt Galligan | 6 | 8 |
| Aubrey Sabala | 2 | 6 |
| Cal Henderson | 15 | 45 |
| Brittany Bohnet | 4 | 2 |
| Zadi Diaz | 5 | n/a |
| Scott Raymond | 8 | n/a |
| Sarah Myers | 4 | 18 |
| Andrew Baron | 11 | 14 |
| Paul Stamatiou | 4 | n/a |
| Leah Culver | 15 | 45 |
| Erik Kastner | 4 | 27 |
| Andre Hyde | 6 | 14 |
| Matthew Levine | 25 | n/a |
Twitter outranks Facebook in Google for 90% of the Above Names
Facebook manages to outrank Twitter for only five of the above names. Facebook ranks higher for Pete Cashmore, Nick Oneill, Jeff Pulver, Brittany Bohnet, and Mark Wielgus.
Twitter is Indexed in Google for Every Name
Twitter is indexed in Google for 100% of the names above. Facebook on the other hand is only indexed for 72% of the list. Facebook fails to rank for Guy Kawasaki, John Gruber, Jason Calacanis, Cali Lewis, Ze Frank, Loic Le Mur, Tantek Çelik, Dan Cederholm, Michael Galpert, Mel Kirk, Jim Louderback, Zadi Diaz, Scott Raymond, and Paul Stamatiou.
Ranking on the First Page of Google
When it comes to ranking in the search engines it is very important to rank on the first page of search. The difference in exposure and traffic from page 1 to page 2 is monumental. In this study, Twitter manages to obtain a first page rank for 43 of the 50 people on the list (a 86% success rate). Facebook, continuing on with the theme, pales in comparison only managing to achieve a page 1 rank for 9 of the 50(a 18% success rate).
Conclusion
While this is only a small sample of users, most of the list is comprised of “Internet Rockstars.” These names get searched often, and it is surprising that Twitter is beating Facebook by such a large margin. My guess is that when these names come up in blog conversation the link-backs will always point to the individual’s blog, or twitter – not Facebook. Everyone knows that anchor text plays a major role in SEO, and it seems Twitter is winning that game.
Do you think that this is an important issue for Facebook? Why do you think Twitter is outranking Facebook by such a large margin?
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I am new to Twitter and have yet to see the real attraction. I do like the simplicity of it though and the lack of parasitic advertising.
well if you take blogspot as a socail network, then it outsmarts them all. Well the magnitude of conetent on the page is a great indexing and ranking factor
thank you
very good info
I would have never thought about this. It seems though that facebook is for a “closed network” of your friends. I should have thought about that before picking a name that i have all but not use anymore for the business. Oh well those things happen. .
thank you very much for informations
thanks
Backlinks in twitter? Not possible!
Traffic from twitter is a wiser decision..
But here the topic is being serps! BlogCatalog isn’t good and useful for that..
I for one am amazed that, twitter profiles show up in the serps. I shall go and sign up for one.
Does not matter who it is, if you are on their site, they make the rules. Best to do everything on your own site so you make the rules. If your are fair, people will come. If you are not fair, people will go. Ebay here in Australia just presented me with the straw that broke the camels back for example. They are removing direct bank deposits as a payment option here and forcing us to use payPal. Yep. they changed the rules, I am gone.
for me the face book never felt like my own since i entered it o2 or o1 or whenever and has felt rather violating and seemed to never be able to do things i wanted it was like everything that i wanted minus what i really wanted. twitter on the other hand is more positive. i think its only the site of the hour but when i go on it once a month its a positive experience and i share deep thoughs with these cool strangers that i call friends. for me the next great service will be called the websiter on websiter.com where people can build a site top down with all the goods a .com domain and the site is absolutely free…im a little high never the less…
Great post AJ! For me personally, I tend to use Twitter for all purposes and have many more work followers on there than I would on Facebook, which I tend to keep more for friends – so I wonder whether that plays a role?
My previous try on this showed that people who are in linkedin are loved more by google than twits. Means searching for a name would give linkedin page result higher than twitter.
The walled garden comment is one that I first heard associated with Facebook about a year ago. When you’ve got way over 60 million users, and growing by the day, I suppose you can afford to be a bit stingy? There are signs, however, that facebook is slowly looking at lifting the veil.
Darn Twitter for being so great
-Mike
Thats an interesting analysis.
You don’t need focuss on makng money using twitter or facebook or anything similar. Networking and meeting new friends is more valuable believe me!
I would like to see where Twitter goes and how it can be used to make some real money.
I already have as many people following me on twitter as I have friends on Facebook and I’ve only been a member of twitter for 1 day.
Yea, I’m kind of into it to now that I finally signed up.
If you ask me, I think it facebook is being penalized by google for duplicate content…
Besides, I think facebook sucks….
Get me at twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ledermanu
I will also immediately become a member of Twitter. I have heard so much about it. By the way, for me, Blogcatalog has brought me quite a lot of traffic.
man thats some great research. great post shoe
Interesting statistics I didn’t knew that twitter is ranked better than facebook. So here we go another method to build backlinks?
I am with those that talk about the time that would go into Twittering. I see the main advantage for myself as a great way to keep those on my team and members of my club updated as to the whereabouts of myself as I’m traveling to speaking engagements.
Getting those thousands to follow require that your be a Shoemoney or something.
Now thats a great analysis.. But i always feel that a page at twitter is faster updated by the user than at facebook and google always likes something new.
Btw i too am in love with twitter since i joined it
I think that’s what I would need to figure out – if I have the time to twitter. I think if you can get several thousand people to follow you it would be worth the time, but if only a handful of people follow on twitter it may not be worth it.
~Terry
So at the end of the day for self branding Twitter is a must?
i think twitter is better one
I just signed up like I said I would. Trying to figure out if I can afford to spend the time twittering.
Damn! I cannot believe that Facebook doesnt get their act together and get a wrap on that.
That’s what I keep hearing, more traffic from Twitter. I’m going to sign up right now…
This isn’t suprising since only the public profile are able to be indexed by Google and those profile pages are very thin. Additionally, almost all Facebook links are blocked using rel=nofollow so none of the internal pages of Facebook help each other. It’s kinda one of those threw the baby out with the bathwater deals for Facebook. A Facebook page (not a profile) does have some SEO value if you use an RSS reader facebook application to populate your blog into Facebook page
great research post AJ. I wonder how friendfeed plays out with google ranking. Since they are updating mor public info than facebook and twitter combined.
Twitter has me in the top 2 results for a search on my name (I forgot I even signed up)
Why do you think the reason twitter accounts are ranking better? What is the reason behind the Google love.
Very interesting…I like Twitter a lot better than Facebook anyways so if it stays like this, I ain’t mad at Facebook.
Great post AJ
Searching my name (well nickname) in Google returns twitter as the number 2 result right after my blog. I have seen some traffic bumps from it.
Good point about attention spans. People just don’t have any on the Internet. With images and information everywhere, it’s tough to stay focused on one thing. Twitter captured that niche and catered to it. Brilliant.
Is Twitter becoming a new twist of Facebook? This is a very interesting list.
Case in point, Scoble’s Twitter has a PR6 and his Facebook has PR2/3 (I got two different results)
Speculation, but I’d guess the reason is simple- there’s usually very little value in pointing a link to a facebook page, unless it’s to say “this person is on facebook.” So people don’t link to them. On the flip side, pointing to twitter actually has value since there’s actual content there for all to see. Which means more people are linking to Twitter. Which in turn means more page rank flows to twitter. More page rank = better placement.
Not to try and hog the thread, but another thought that hadn’t crossed my mind is the fact that much of the content on facebook is restricted from view by everyone and I assume also restricted by search engines. It could be just a natural result of the nature of the two systems.
Another thought is how twitter is basically a network of intertwined links pointing from one twitter account to another. Accounts that have a large following and post frequently have a huge number of links from other twitter accounts naturally. This should lead a little link love from google, even if it is all from the same site.
Interesting comparison – assuming all of those mentioned use the same name on Twitter and Facebook. Seeing a trend on Twitter to have two accounts: one for the business name and one for the personal name.
I think it has a lot to do with the internal linking structure of twitter as well. Powerful accounts get powerful, keyword rich internal links from all over the place. I wrote about this on our blog. Hope you don’t mind the link!
Looks like you discovered another trend early on. I wouldn’t be surprised if the gap widened further. Twitter allows for a short read and is good for attention spans. That definitely describes the worlds future direction. The question is how to put Twitter to work for maximum gain!
Even better that you are using twitter since you’re now looking at it closer and sharing info with us. I noticed this too but didn’t look up so many names. Twitter profiles appear to get well indexed. Even more interesting is where twitter ranks for keywords and brands. Your atop the fold with shoemoney. Bet that’s the case for others as well.
Great research! Thanks for post it. I’ve found the same stuff as a user, I can never find someone on facebook by their name and rarely do I ever see a facebook page pop up in Google that links me to someone I’m looking for. Much easier to find Twitter names and the fact that you can use so many searches to find people on Twitter, such as Twitdir, makes it even easier to find people.
that’s an interesting sight of Twitter. I start using last month but it didn’t bring me traffic yet. I hope it changes over the next months…
Well, I will say that it all sounds good for MouthyGirl.com – Twitter has brought me more traffic than I thought it would and will hopefully continue to do so….Thanks for this insight!
I think it is like you said, very few of these people are actually using facebook to promote themselves outside of facebook. As such, when conversations about them arise and backlinks are created, it is very rarely to their facebook pages. More than likely, it is about their site or something they said on twitter.