I have been a member of twitter since August 20, 2008 and honestly, I don’t really understand how twitter works and no idea on how to tap its power to benefit my site. I just tweeted links from my site hoping that the members of the twitosphere will check it out.

However in 1 year, my Google Analytics shows me that I only received 342 visits from twitter.

Last December 2009, Google announced a new feature allowing real-time streams of updates from various social networks as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before to appear in its search results page.

“Our real-time search enables you to discover breaking news the moment it’s happening, even if it’s not the popular news of the day, and even if you didn’t know about it beforehand.”

In the days that followed, I noticed that fresh tweets from twitter are already included in the Google SERPs; and they have a high visibility because it is displayed at the top.

I realized that this should be a good source of traffic for my site and set out to conduct an experiment.

Since tweets can be up to 140 characters only, I decided to use bit.ly as my URL shortener for my experiment. It also has a tracking feature to know how many clicked on the links I tweeted.

So on April 10, 2010 during the airing of UFC 112 from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, I tried to direct traffic to my UFC 112 LIVE stream post by tweeting about the event. Since one of the trending search keywords during that hour was “UFC 112 live stream free”, I used that in my tweets for every fighter matchup. I highlighted the keywords below.

When I checked the Google SERPs for “UFC 112 live stream free”, there it is: my tweet appeared on the real time search result.

After the event, I checked my bit.ly stats and found out that for the duration of the event, the links I gave on my tweets have generated 1,033 clicks to my site. I think that’s not bad for 2 hours. I had 7,956 total visitors that day so that comprised around 13% of my total traffic which is not shabby either.

My conclusion?

Based on my experiment, I can say that twitter can be a good source of traffic.

However, this is not for everyone because only tweets from users with high twitter authority can appear on Google’s real-time search results. This is to prevent spamming.

Check out this post from hubspot on the factors that determine a tweet’s authority.

I have a twitter authority grade of 96.4 out of 100.

If you want to know yours, check out the link: twitter grader.

Please read my related posts:

1. Google Launches “Instant Search” With a slogan of “Search: now faster than the speed of type”, our favorite search engine Google has launched Google Instant today. So, this is what the hoopla with the September 7 and September 8 Google doodles is all about....
2. How to Use Yahoo! Answers to Get Traffic to Your Website Yahoo! Answers is an online community managed by Yahoo! where users can both answer and submit questions on unlimited range of topics. It is one of the most popular Internet reference site aside from Wikipedia. It has a system of...
3. Shane Mosley Announces Fight With Manny Pacquiao on Twitter It’s official, Manny Pacquiao’s opponent for his next fight would be Shane Mosley. Sugar Shane himself announced the news on his Twitter account, With the failure of the Pacquiao vs Mayweather megafight, possible opponents laid out for the pound-for-pound king...
4. Barack Obama and Shaquille O’Neal Are My Twitter Followers I have registered on twitter last August 20, 2008 out of curiosity. I have read that it’s one of the fastest growing social networking sites in the world so I registered. But unlike its counterparts like facebok where I can...
5. LeBron James Joins Twitter Lebron James finally jumped on the band wagon: by joining the multitude of NBA players with Twitter accounts. With his impending free agency status still unknown, Lebron decided to create one identifying himself as the “King of Akron” in his...
6. Shaquille O’Neal Retires! Announces Retirement on Twitter After dominating the NBA for 19 years, Shaquille O’Neal has announced on twitter his retirement. “We did it. 19 years baby. I want to thank you very much. That’s why I’m telling you first. I’m about to retire. Love you....
7. The Year That Was: Chatroulette Tops Google Search Results for 2010 Chatroulette is the most googled term for the year 2010. Yes, more people typed “chatroulette” in the Google search engine than “justin bieber”, “lady gaga”, “ipad”or even our favorite “facebook”. This is based on Google’s micro site Zeitgeist. “Zeitgeist” means...
8. Happy 12th Birthday Google! Thank You For Being So Good To Me Twelve years ago this month, our favorite search engine Google became, well.. Google. Although there has been a confusion on when really is Google’s exact birthday, Google today has a doodle of a cake on its homepage. That means that...
9. How to Make a Google Bomb In an apparent attack to his administration, US President Barack Obama today fell victim to a Google bomb when the Google search result for the phrase “worst failure ever” returns his official biography from the White House web site as...
10. Today’s Google Doodle: Gray Logo After yesterday’s mysterious doodle appearing at Google’s homepage, another one has replaced it that is more mysterious albeit simpler. While the September 7 Google logo is very colorful and interactive, today’s version is just a plain gray logo. It becomes...

If you want to receive my latest posts, please subscribe to my full feed RSS or have them delivered through email. Just enter your email address below and hit the Subscribe button.

Tags: bit.ly, google, twitter, UFC 112