Missing from twitter search – the impacts

On the 8th April 2011 one of my twitter accounts got flagged and removed from twitter search and of course stopped feeding google.

I had a pretty good idea about what had flagged it but twitter do not disclose the reason which is fair enough to stop spammers..

In my case I “think” is was due to the tweets being spiky as in many one minute and not so many for 1hr in other words flooding people timelines..

The diagram below taken from tweetcounter shows the point in which the tweets stopped showing in search, #tags and on google. The numbers on tweetcounter are off but you can clearly see a loss of followers the day after the search block and a continued drop off.

The green lines below show the potential growth / loss of followers in this case it was 1,000’s

How to get back in to twitter search?

Firstly I’m assuming your not a spammer…

If it’s a auto block and you have just noticed it then I’d wait a fews days as from all my readings on the subject its likely to be temporary.

If it’s not temporary you need to work out what has changed. Check www.twittercounter.com and see the loss and date on the graphs. Once you know the date have a look at your timeline or what you have changed in your tweeting habits.

Are you tweeting to much per min / hr / day?

Have you followed/unfollowed to many people?

Are you only tweeting links to one site?

From twitter itself:

Repeatedly posting duplicate or near-duplicate content (links or tweets)
Abusing trending topics or hashtags (topic words with a # sign)
Sending automated tweets or replies
Using bots or applications to post similar messages based on keywords
Posting similar messages over multiple accounts
Aggressively following and un-following people

Checkout twitter advice here:
http://support.twitter.com/entries/42646

Once you have fixed your account you need to submit a support ticket here https://support.twitter.com/forms/general explian why you think you have been removed from twitter search and how you have changed your tweets to be inline(more inline) with twitter advice.

Automatic tweets may be flagged but many accounts use them like bbc and other news outlets and blogs. I’ve checked loads of auto tweet accounts that only link to one site and haven’t been flagged.

I hope that helps.

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