Making sense of Twitter and Google Pageranks

Why is the Google Pagerank for my Twitter profile the same as Lance Armstrong’s?

So I have a bit of an obsessive personality. One of my latest obsessions is Twitter and another that I’ve for a much longer time is Google Pagerank.

Over the years I’ve found that there are 3 good rules to continuing to see your Pagerank go up:

1. Create good content consistently over time with an eye to using thoughtful keywords
2. Always be on the lookout for new high quality inbound links, and
3. Send Google blogger Matt Cutts a nice bottle of Scotch at Christmas

This is of course a very simple formula and there’s a lot going unsaid in my rules, except for the “Matt Cutts Scotch” rule which is really straightforward.

But here I am with my new Twitter obsession and I’m finding myself at a complete loss as to how Google is determining the ranking score for individual user pages. I’m assuming that the “send Matt Cutts Scotch” rule isn’t applying so I’m looking to the first two and namely the second one, because inbound quality links is a very powerful factor in a page’s Google rank.

So let’s take my Twitter page to begin with at http:www.twitter.com/kgrandia . I have 5 links back to my Twitter account and a Google pagerank of 5 out of 10, I have 1,500 followers and I’m following 1,100 people. I post new “Tweets” on Twitter about 5 or 6 times a day.

Now look at some of the alpha users on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/kevinrose
Pagerank: 6
Link backs: 1,390
Followers: 141,302
Following: 148
Updates: 2.055
Average # of tweets: 4 or 5 times a day

http://twitter.com/BarackObama
Pagerank: 7
Link backs: 1,770
Followers: 284,351
Following: 276,346
Updates: 264
Average # of tweets: none since Jan. 15th

http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong
Pagerank: 5
Link backs: 543
Followers: 123,254
Following: 40
Updates: 964
Average # of tweets: 5 or 6 times a day

http://twitter.com/LeoLaporte
Pagerank: 4
Link backs: 566
Followers: 88,441
Following: 687
Updates: 1,870
Average # of tweets: 4 or 5 times a day

http://twitter.com/maddow
Pagerank: 6
Link backs: 557
Followers: 312,217
Following: 554
Updates: 171
Average # of tweets: once every couple of days

And here’s a random sampling of “the rest of us”:

http://twitter.com/markhor
Pagerank: 4
Link backs: 2
Followers: 78
Following: 58
Updates: 36
Average # of tweets: less than one a week

http://twitter.com/marybnolan
Pagerank: 5
Link backs: 1
Followers: 412
Following: 355
Updates: 673
Average # of tweets: twice a day

http://twitter.com/MaryHr
Pagerank: 2
Link backs: 2
Followers: 164
Following: 83
Updates: 663
Average # of tweets: 4 or 5 times a day

http://twitter.com/MaternalSpark
Pagerank: not indexed
Link backs: 0
Followers: 1,052
Following: 809
Updates: 1,996
Average # of tweets: 6 or 7 times a day

http://twitter.com/matthewstoller
Pagerank: 6
Link backs: 1
Followers: 1,344
Following: 123
Updates: 330
Average # of tweets: not posted since Jan. 7th

http://twitter.com/marciamarcia
Pagerank: 4
Link backs: 79
Followers: 1,011
Following: 559
Updates: 1,287
Average # of tweets: more than 10 times a day

http://twitter.com/leeodden
Pagerank: 5
Link backs: 583
Followers: 7,771
Following: 955
Updates: 6,021
Average # of tweets: more than 10 times a day

Do you see what I mean?

Normally, there’s at least somewhat of a rhyme and reason to Google Pagerank scores and understanding this reasoning observing consistent patterns in pageranks is one way (for me at least) to comprehend the Google search gods. When I’m out and about on the web reading blog posts etc., I see a pagerank and I am comforted that it’s what think it should be. It was comforting to know that maybe, just maybe, I understood this massive beast in some way.

But this strange inconsistency in Twitter rankings has me all confused.

Why should I care? Because I’m finding Twitter posts and profiles showing up more and more in Google page results and this trend will no doubt continue as Twitter continues its atmospheric rise in popularity. So its important to understanding how Google sees and indexes Twitter users and their posts, much like it is important to understand how Google understands and indexes a normal blog post.

Any ideas what’s going on? Matt Cutts, can I send you a bottle of Scotch for an answer?

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