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...

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.

  • @MeanEYEEnglish
    87•1 year ago

    Mind you this is not Google doing it on purpose. This is just Musk’s genius idea of blocking tweets without being logged in. Others will drop as well, they just need some time to expire. Also, if you are wondering if they can show tweets to crawler but not show it to others Google doesn’t look favorably on that. Content must appear the same to crawler as well as humans.

    • Dr. MooseEnglish
      23•1 year ago

      Note that Google allows plenty of login gated content which is actually against their indexing terms.

      The key is not to force it for every viewer or give a few view credits. The fact that Mollusk gang doesn’t know this is very reflective of their current capabilities. There’s no real talent left at Twitter.

    • niktemadur
      17•1 year ago

      Broken people breaking things.

      Throw money around recklessly, regard your broken self as some great lord of a realm, treat people as your slaves, then fiddle with little pet peeves in utter ignorance of how and why they work, watch a cascade effect spiral out of control, blame anyone and everyone but yourself.

      This is a right-wing pattern. Look at the orange cock holster and the bullshit he was fixated on while squatting in the White House. The mind of a petulant child.

      • @notatoadEnglish
        18•1 year ago

        people really need to get over this nonsense. yeah, twitter wasn’t paying their bills. but now they have paid it. it was just for some internal analytics services, not the main site, and had nothing to do with twitter’s recent downtime.

        google’s not going to retaliate against them after they paid.

        • @[email protected]English
          8•1 year ago

          In general: cloud provider’s marginal costs for continue to host something while a customer doesn’t pay is negligible. Keeping it running while incurring more receivables, or blocking access while making it clear there is an easy way to reclaim data and functionality, are immensely more profitable. Nothing to “retaliate” really.

        • @[email protected]English
          3•1 year ago

          I really hope google spammed musk’s phone with calls about the outstanding balance.

          The reality is that this guy leading the company is refusing to pays bills for other services like he is on a bankruptcy spree. So not surprising that people don’t get over his ‘he paid it on this one item, so stop’.

          Just because he orderer a massive dinner, and finally paid for the drinks, does not make that guy a person of illl repute.

      • @MeanEYEEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        I honestly doubt it is that, but it might affect things in the long run. Musk could be trying to cut costs, but that’s no less worse than trying to force people to pay.