In recent months I have been reading all kind of material on Facebook, search and SEO. I’m not here to predict the future or to hype Facebook as the new better search. Instead I’d like to analyze the clues we already have.
Others have done great work on Facebook SEO by now.
Moreover I’d like to combine these clues with the statistics suggesting that people trust their friends when it comes to products, services and other recommendations while at the same they by now distrust social media in general.
Facebook search is still in its very early stages so this post is only guess work but to me it seems that Facebook search will become the dominant player sooner or later.
This might sound very vague but let me explain why I think so. Just yesterday Twitter founder Biz Stone announced that they are bigger than Bing and Yahoo together as a search engine. So why won’t Twitter become the next search engine of choice? Well, they’re results suck. I’ve written about that already more then once. Also they have a huge bot problem. You socialize with bots not people in case you autofollow Twitter accounts. It’s really hard to find the real people on Twitter these days as the bots pollute Twitter with their automated retweets.
IMHO, there are far more real people on Facebook than on Twitter. People trust people they know. So Twitter has the same problem with bots as Google has.
Automated content farms scraping their content from all over the Web or fully automated Twitter accounts, both have no trust and real people wouldn’t “like” them or share them on Facebook, at least not using their real names.
Even if spammers start to build Facebook bots that click on like buttons it won’t really mess up Facebook search as you’d still see search results provided by your friends, most probably real people with real names.
Already my search results for SEO on Facebook are almost perfect, after all they match my choices.
I get the companies and resources I like on top, plus those who have “SEO” in their name and the most friends we both share. While I dislike the “on page factors” taken into account here because they can easily get manipulated the first 7 results I got were really great.
Searching for a smartphone, netbook or such I get the results most people recommend on top. You can manipulate that too but in this early stage it seems either not many people do it yet or Facebook has reached critical mass and thus ensures search result quality.
Google has also customizable search results and results by friends etc. Still you get the anonymously linked up resources on top. Twitter shows the most popular ones but only at a given moment, plus you get main stream crap like SEO jokes on top when you search for SEO.
When I search for SEO I want to see the sources I trust on top not Wikipedia or stupid rants by Derek Powazek. Both Google and Twitter rank not the best results on top but those most contentious, for whatever reason. As most people don’t understand SEO they either look it up on Wikipedia or dismiss it. This works as long as there are enough links or tweets by real people. Otherwise both Google and Twitter will offer you automated crap. So it gets from bad to worse.
Am I too optimistic here? Will Facebook search soon deteriorate? Or will it become even better at finding out what truly matters to me and you and thus dominate search in the future?
I mean if Twitter search can become bigger than Bing and Yahoo together it would be no problem for Facebook to become ten times bigger. After all it has roughly 10 times more users and unlike with Twitter most of them are real people.
In support of your theory, I found this blog and began following it just yesterday based on a Facebook search.
Excellent analysis, IMHO Google and FB are understanding that they will have to work together in the future
Good post tad…. excellent analysis…. I have also observe “when I searched “SEO” in google search I got the wikipedia page” So I don’t think so with you…
Bryan: Great to hear! Thank you for the valuable feedback!
Mariano: In fact I hope they won’t work together. Together they would just know everything about you and have an almost complete monopoly over the Web. Social search is the future nonetheless.
I’m a latecomer to Facebook but have been dragged there kicking and screaming. I’m actually boggled by how bad Facebook search is in my experience. I search for pages that I know are there and yet they’re nowhere to be found in the FB search results. Seriously makes me question putting any effort into a page there.
Liz
Hi there,Useful post, although i’m more concerned in what will take place out of the google vs facebook social network war. I haven’t heard much news on it recently, which quite likely implies that its not that far off, but i have a sense its going to mean several major changes to social networks. I think, i’d rather facebook left the war still in the lead due to the fact google’s already large enough, additionally they currently hold too much data on everyone. I do not reckon that both have the opportunity to exist though, either google’s social network will take over or absolutely crash. Just what does anybody else feel?
Its really not that easy even if the tutorial is very detailed. Its putting it into practical that is a little hard. I’m going to link back from my Facebook Followers directory, you should get credit for the well explained and illustrated tutorial :)
Thanks for post. Maybe you can answer a question for me: I’m running a campaign in which numbers/fans count. Our stats show we’ve had 813 clicks in the past 3 days, but we only have 203 fans. Shouldn’t clicking the ad make them an automatic fan? What am I doing wrong??
Thanks in advance for any and all help/solutions!
I don’t think Facebook search has taken off anywhere near as much as it was expected too. Although i think they are probably focused other things currently