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.

  • irkli@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    And this is interesting…
    https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/110657916419002616

    "rodhilton Rod Hilton @[email protected] I have some insider knowledge here that I wanted to share.

    This is not happening because Google scrapes Twitter and is now unable to. Google has been a paying customer (with a special negotiated rate) of the Firehose API for nearly a decade. Presumably, that deal was still in effect, barring API rate changes having an impact.

    So this decision is solely because the results can no longer be viewed by non-logged-in users.

    https://universeodon.com/@TomWellborn/

    • Obinice@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, if the content is walled off from the public, there’s not much point indexing it

      It’s a shame it’s come to this, but there are literal crazy people at the helm over at Twitter…

        • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Would that fit with his own head cannon though?

          Elon has been a destroyer behind closed doors it’s sounds like, tough to say if it was just due to how pompous and narcissistic he is or if it was deliberate retaliation for being a whiny little spoiled brat.