Twitter have today removed all link juice from profile bio links and it’s fair to say this hasn’t gone down too well in the SEO industry.
The move follows Dave Naylor’s backlink tip which caused Matt Cutts to notify Twitter founder Evan Williams, appearing to recommend that hyperlinks are removed from profile bio pages.
As I wrote earlier in the week Twitter has become a very important tool in the search industry, and this began to cause controversy because many active users feel that the time and effort they have spent in building up their Twitter profiles should be rewarded with a backlink to promote their own websites.
This tweet from Sugarrae helps to show the general feeling people have about why bio links should be valued by Google:
With a good point made by Graywolf:
And another valid opinion from Rishil:
I would agree with all of the above statements and in my opinion Twitter could learn a great deal from the way Sphinn and SEOmoz reward the active members in the community. Sphinn nofollow all submission links until they hit the homepage and SEOmoz nofollow profile links until you reach 100+ user points.
What do you think, is this wrongly punishing legitimate Twitter users or is this necessary to stop spammers? And, if Google have contributed with advice about how these links are valued, should they be recommending this?
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What Twitter could Learn from Sphinn & SEOmoz Nofollow Tactics
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