Twitter announced they will be wrapping all links through their own URL shortener. So if you post a URL, it will automatically be shortened and passed through http://t.co/ as a URL.
I tested the URLs and they are 301 redirected, which is a good thing. But many SEOs already use a URL shortener and yes, those URLs are 301ed.
The thing is, most SEOs prefer not to chain redirect URLs. By that I mean, you do not want to 301 redirect a bit.ly URL to a t.co URL and then 301 that to a final destination URL. The more 301 redirects, the slower search engines pick up and pass through.
Plus, we do know that some PageRank is lost during 301 redirecting a URL to another URL. So having it go through two redirects adds to that. Plus, it takes Googler a longer time to realize chain redirects. Finally, a recent SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday with Matt Cutts said chain redirects are a bad idea.
So if SEOs continue to use their own shorteners and if Twitter passes short URLs through their own shorteners, then SEOs may have a problem with the chain redirects.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
