Not sure if someone at Twitter Headquarters knows how their URLs appear on search engines, but they need to enlighten themselves with Google guidelines to improve their appearance.

Well-known people like Barack Obama and Russell Brand have already figured out how to get individual descriptions for their Twitter page on Google, even if Twitter itself doesn’t care

Let me show you the main issue with Twitter descriptions on Google.

Main Issue 

Google indexes every tweet’s URL as a separate page. As you can see, the problem is how Google shows the individual tweet of “Google Search Guru Matt Cutt’s tweet.”

So, you can see in the image how it shows meaningless titles and identical meta descriptions –which doesn’t make sense at all.

Moreover, all page title sections begin with “Twitter/username”, using up to 20 characters out of approx. 60 characters – which Google shows.

As it only uses 30ish characters, it only displays half of the start of every tweet as the rest of the Title, rendering it meaningless: “Some great info about the …” and “A friend and I are on a …”

On top of that, Twitter has set meta descriptions of every page as the same message: “Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time.”

What’s the end result? When you look at each tweet on Google, it’s impossible to discern what it is about.

How can Twitter Fix it?

Twitter can use the meta description to fix the half meaningless title issue. Tweets are limited to 140 characters, and Google’s meta description shows up to 150 characters.

So here is what Twitter should do: utilise the whole content of the tweet as the meta description and show (the beginning of) it in the title.

How Barack Obama got Lucky to Have His own Description?

Normally, this is what comes when we type in someone’s name on Google Search, and their Twitter page comes up:

This is a general description of Philip Schofield’s Twitter page in Google.

Though certain public members have personalised individual descriptions, Barack Obama and Russell Brand are two to name.

This is how Barack Obama’s Twitter page comes up on Google.

But, how do they get personalised messages? The truth is that they have submitted their Twitter pages to DMOZ (The Directory of the Web), and Google is importing the description from there.

So, if you get lucky enough to get your Twitter page listed on DMOZ, you will be able to have individual descriptions as well.

On the other hand, the answer is a little more evident this time. When you join Twitter, there is a Bio area that you may fill out. So why isn’t that the meta description for everyone’s Twitter homepage on Twitter?

Maybe in the future, we can see Twitter letting users have personalised descriptions and more appropriate titles, but right now, it isn’t doing much for people who want to drive traffic and build links through Google.