Tumblr is growing at a ridiculous pace. Some time last night, they crossed 1 billion posts, breaking the layout of their About page. Looks like their web designer didn’t think they’d reach 1 billion this fast. Even as they grow, there are still issues with Tumblr ranking in the search engines.
According to TechCrunch, Tumblr stands at 7.2 million users. They are creating 5.2 million posts each day. Quantcast says that Tumblr gets 1.7 billion page views every month. Only half of Tumblr’s users reside in the US and they add about 25,000 new users every day.
There are Tumblr applications available for iPhone and iPad. Just this month, they also launched an app for Android. They are experiencing the type of growth that we may have seen with Twitter just as they hit the mainstream. The problem is that the very features that make the site so easy to get into are what prevent it from ranking well in search.
Google’s algorithms are based on mostly on content and backlinks. Both of these can be generated very easily in Tumblr. The Reblog feature lets you immediately grab and repost any content you see on Tumblr. Reblogging also gets you a backlink from the source. You can reblog something in about 4 seconds according to Soshable.
To put it into perspective, one of our clients currently runs 15 successful and content-rich Tumblelogs and spends less than 30 minutes a day keeping them maintained.
It’s easy to see why Google is wary of giving these tumblogs any authority in search. Many of Tumblr’s 1 billion+ posts are simply duplicates. The core of Tumblr’s growth is in users duplicating content and creating backlinks using the Reblog feature. Duplicating content waters down the authority of Tumblr posts and the proliferation of backlinks makes it look like a link farm. Outbound links from Tumblr are probably tainted because of this setup.
As Tumblr continues to grow in popularity, it will be interesting to see if Google makes any moves to change their algorithms. Most current Tumblr users probably couldn’t care less whether people can find their blogs via search, but things may have to change if Tumblr is to really succeed in the mainstream.