Did Twitter crush blog-based linkbaiting?

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http://www.seomoz.org/blog/could-twi...ebs-link-graph

Great article on old blog-based ways of linkbaiting and Twitter's impact on this method...

Twitter, and sites that aggregate data from it, like Tweetmeme, actually expose content before social voting sites like Digg, Reddit or Hacker News
It can be 12-24 hours between when content is first "tweeted" vs. when it earns its first external link
Many pieces of "throwaway" content (a quick, funny image, post or video) will earn virtually no links, even if hundreds of people have shared them on Twitter
I think it's way too early to determine if this trend is real or if it will continue, but the SEO industry has been talking for years about when the engines might start to evolve beyond link analysis. This is one of the first credible expansions I've seen.

The last 2 sentences are crucial... Does the rise of Twitter/Social media mean a huge leap forward to Search Engines' evolution toward a non-link analysis based system? For one thing the "flight to quality content" is refreshing but it might finally take shape as a battle between who has the most buzz building clout. Your thoughts?

[fatfoo]

I think that it is very difficult for a machine to calculate "quality of content."

They can try to count keyword density, duplicity, # words used or whatever they want. However, only a human being can judge on quality. A machine can't tell the quality of an image, either (aside from resolution).

[Pornwolf]

Yeah, it's a definite turn away from the whole analysis method.

Now it is about link amount and relevancy, buzz length, and bounce rate. Anything you want to know about a site can be determined by that.

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Originally Posted by fatfoo

I think that it is very difficult for a machine to calculate "quality of content."

They are using Social media for this. Smart move. Harder (but not impossible) to fake. Specially if filtered based on location.

[InfoGuy]

If Google, Yahoo, Bing, et al choose to place more emphasis on tweets in SERP algorithms, expect to see sharply higher levels of phishing attacks.

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Originally Posted by InfoGuy

If Google, Yahoo, Bing, et al choose to place more emphasis on tweets in SERP algorithms, expect to see sharply higher levels of phishing attacks.

Definitely one of the risk factors in going that direction. The holy grail of an objective barometer for quality and trust is still way in the future.