SEARCHENGINES
Twitter Removes Nofollow From Links

Twitter, sometime over the past week or so, has removed the nofollow attribute from its links. This is unusual for a number of reason, the largest is that Twitter had nofollowed links on its social network since 2008 on bio links and 2009 on all tweets. So why change it now?
I reported this news at Search Engine Land on Friday after Chris Silver Smith posted about it on Twitter saying “SEO folks, you might be interested to know that Twitter is apparently no longer using rel=”nofollow”. So, profiles, tweets, and other pages on Twitter may now contain followed links.”
Here is that tweet:
SEO folks, you might be interested to know that Twitter is apparently no longer using rel=”nofollow”. So, profiles, tweets, and other pages on Twitter may now contain followed links!🔗‼️ Observations🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/P5ldLSfaxq
— Chris Silver Smith (@si1very) June 10, 2022
Truth is, I doubt Google will count these links, even if they are followed but hey, why did Twitter drop the nofollow from the links? I emailed Twitter on Friday but I have still not heard back yet from Twitter on this topic. I initially thought this was removed by a developer by mistake, not knowing what the nofollow was and just removing it when pushing a code update. But who knows.
The redirect itself is a weird one, and some are even seeing the nofollow, as Glenn Gabe pointed out:
Regarding Twitter removing nofollow, it’s interesting to see the wayback machine showing nofollow there (even when checking snapshots from yesterday & today). But not sure it matters anyway, since Google could be devaluing all links there (like it can for social networks.) pic.twitter.com/X9wnfXk8hv
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 11, 2022
It is just weird and Google also has not commented on this change – not that they need to.
I wouldn’t run and start spamming Twitter with links, although Twitter is already super spammed already with links, even when nofollow links were there. So the nofollow didn’t really help that much reduce spam but can this lead to more link spam on Twitter?
This change by Twitter is just unusual and I do wonder if we will see the nofollow return soon.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Google Ad Revenues Down 3.6% Year Over Year

Google reported earnings last night and their ad revenue not only slowed but was technically lower year over year. Google’s ad revenue was down about 3.6%, while total revenue was up just around 1%.
Here is the snippet from the earnings report showing that:
Remember, Microsoft reported earnings the week prior and showed slowed growth but still growth. Microsoft Bing Ads grew 10% last quarter.
Here is a look at Google’s earnings numbers for the past 3 years:
You can see that Q4 2021 was higher than Q4 2022!
Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet and Google, said: “Our Q4 consolidated revenues were $76 billion, up 1% year over year, or up 7% in constant currency, and $283 billion for the full year 2022, up 10%, or up 14% in constant currency. We have significant work underway to improve all aspects of our cost structure, in support of our investments in our highest growth priorities to deliver long-term, profitable growth.”
Hence the mass Google layoffs to cut costs and increase profit. Keep in mind, Google’s profit was insane – $18 billion, that is $1 billion in profit per week! Sure, Google’s net income was down 34% year over year, so I get Wall Street.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Microsoft Bing ChatGPT Search Interface Screenshots?

Owen Yin shared some screenshots of what he said he saw on the Microsoft Bing website. It looks like the beta version of the upcoming ChatGPT features that we are all expecting Bing to announce in the coming weeks (maybe even this coming Tuesday).
Owen shared these screenshots on Twitter and then posted more details on Medium.
Here is the home page screenshot that widens and enlarges the search box and says “Ask me anything”:
Here is his screenshot of the results, the answers being returned:
And here is the GIF he made of this:
It would not surprise me if this is being tested in the wild by Microsoft Bing, as all the evidence leads to a big announcement about this type of feature being released sometime in the next week or so.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Revamps The Canonicalization Search Help Documentation

Google has updated its search help documentation around canonicalization this morning. The Google Search Relations team split in three distinct sections and updated a lot of the content to provide clearer details around how Google Search and canonicalization works.
The three sections include:
All of this use to be on a single help page, which you can review on the Wayback Machine over here to compare.
With this, Gary Illyes from Google dropped another LinkedIn tip on the topic of canonicalization, he wrote:
Friday ramble: you can stack canonicalization signals to strengthen that hint.
You have a rel=canonical pointing from A to B, but A is HTTPS, it’s in your hreflang clusters, all your links are pointing to A, and A is included in your sitemaps instead of B. Which one should search engines pick as canonical, A or B?
If you just change the URLs from A to B in your sitemaps and hreflang clusters, combined with that rel=canonical it might already be enough to tip over canonicalization to B. Change the links also, and you have an even greater chance to convince search engines about your canonical preference.
Recently, Gary also mentioned to use absoluate URLs for rel-canonical.
So check out these new docs and learn a bit more on canonicalization and Google Search.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
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