Rumours have been circulating that Google intends to buy Twitter. It’s hardly surprising; Twitter is one of the most well-known and widely-used social media platforms on the internet, second only to mega-sites like Facebook. Ownership of Twitter would be incredibly profitable for Google, but it would also enable the web giant to use the platform as a means to promote itself.
But are these rumours really reliable? After all, just because it makes sense for Google to buy Twitter, that doesn’t automatically mean that the search company has any plans to do so. The rumours certainly have enough substance to have driven Twitter’s stock prices up by 4%. However, this isn’t the first time this has happened; similar rumours have driven up Twitter’s stock price on previous occasions, only for the platform to remain conspicuously independent of Google.
Nonetheless, this round of rumours seems a lot more plausible. Back in February, we all learned of Google’s plans to incorporate tweets into its search results in real time. While this may have been a simple case of Google wishing to improve its user’s experience, there is another possibility; Google may well have been making preparations for the day when it would own Twitter. This seems all the more likely because these rumours have emerged independently only a few months after we learned of Google’s plans to index tweets in its search results.
But what does this mean for your business’s online marketing and SEO strategy? Under Google’s ownership, Twitter is likely to receive improved search functionality (after all, that’s what Google’s famous for). What’s more, we can expect to see increased integration of tweets into Google’s search own results that go beyond Google’s current publicly-known plans. Both of these changes will make it easier and more intuitive to apply search engine optimisation to your business’s Twitter account, which will allow you to promote your company more effectively.
However, Google’s search algorithms are very effective at penalising low-quality content and ‘spam’. If Google were to take control of it, Twitter would most likely start to incorporate similar algorithms. In other words, while it will be easier to promote your business on Twitter using high-quality content, it will be much harder to promote it by relying on high volumes of lower-quality tweets.
Of course, until the rumours are confirmed, this should be treated as speculation. However, those business’s that plan in advance for a takeover of Twitter by Google will have an edge if an when the rumours come to fruition.
