Posts tagged Search
Or why I don’t Like Google’s new social recommendation button.
When Facebook launched their Like button, I wrote about how the weak signals provided by users Liking content across the web could prove a powerful weapon for Facebook in a looming battle with Google to help users discover content.
“Likes” could be used to infer significance in the way that Google had done for a decade with backlinks, but with some additional advantages over backlinks:
- Over time, a far broader spread of the population has the potential to “Like” than is ever likely to create a backlink: the liking signals are thus more powerful
- By knowing the identify of Likers, Facebook has a better chance to avoid the issues of spam that have become associated with backlinks and Google.
- Having built out the social graph, Facebook is also able to use the preferences of friends to build on the raw ‘Like’ data.
Google’s clearly worried about this, and announced their ‘Like’ equivalent, the +1 button this week.
It’s a valiant attempt to play catch-up, and a huge hat-tip to Zuckerberg’s genius in extending the Like button across the entire web. But I’m not sure it’s enough:
- Where’s the incentive for users to “+1” something? In particular I can’t fathom why a consumer would +1 a search result listing, presumably before even visiting the associated site. Unless Google can make Google Profiles a credible competitor to Facebook, I don’t see many doing this. Given their track record in social, neither do I see Google making Profiles a credible competitor to Facebook.
- On the other hand, you can guarantee that SEOs, particularly those with the darker shades of headwear, will be all over this. The potential incentive of a higher ranking position means that non-average-consumers will attempt to game the system. This is bad for Google.
- Without Facebook’s Social Graph advantage, it will be harder for Google to weed out +1 spam. Also, they won’t have Facebook’s advantage of being able to understand preferences based on connections preferences. Even if they were to use their Gmail data (which, presumably they won’t do after the Buzz debacle) there are still far fewer Gmail users than Facebook users.
Google’s best hope for success is via YouTube, their only real social success. They need to replace the thumbs up “Like” (!) button with +1, and start building the social graph between friends on YouTube who’ve never posted videos (rather than just subscribers to video channels). YouTube videos are probably one of the most shared items on Facebook: Google needs to attempt to capture this sharing directly in YouTube and cut-out the middle man. But given Facebook’s head start in mapping the social graph, this won’t be easy.
In short, I’m still backing Facebook to win this war: it’s going to be easier for Facebook to build search than it is for Google to build social.
(For the opposite opinion, read Tom Critchlow’s article on SEOmoz, which also explains +1 in more detail)
As part of a project I’m currently working on for a client, I’m digging into their search performance and SEO. Much of the online debate and discussion is about optimisation for natural or organic search results. But Google doesn’t actually allocate much above-the-fold inventory to these results on many results pages these days.
This really hit home when I started preparing a visual to explain to the client the different types of search results (see the image above). Only about 30% of the above-the-fold results space was for classic ‘organic’ results. Paid search got 43% of the space, but image, local and shopping were all also above the fold (and no video results for this search).
Worth checking the anatomy of Google’s results pages for your target keywords before obsessing too much about the minutiae of classical organic search. Perhaps your time and effort would be better spent on optimising for Shopping, Local or Image results?
Although my reposting of the RSA Animate video generated lots of visits, the post I’m asked about the most is the one about the Facebook vs. Google battle and the need to optimize for discovery within the Open Graph.
If you haven’t noticed, there have been a few recent developments:
- Facebook has apparently said that all “Liked” pages will show up in search results (although some testing seems to show that this isn’t happening yet)
- Facebook also seems to have auto-generated scores of new Community pages, populating them with content from Wikipedia and public postings. Look at this example for Floristry, or this one for Self Catering, and even this one for my old friend Telebid. They’re soliciting contributors to these pages at the moment, and (somewhat obscurely) asking for the “Official Facebook Page” (which when you click it asks for a Wikipedia article or official site URL: I don’t understand - anyone else clearer?).
- (What’s significant is that these Community pages are being returned when you search on Facebook, and also being promoted via Social Ads. I first stumbled across one when I saw an ad saying four of my friends allegedly liked Reading. I was curious as to why this somewhat dull town just west of London aroused such passion: it turns out that my friends aren’t alone: over 4 million people apparently like Reading!)
- Facebook are also asking for beta testers for a new product that looks suspiciously like a questions/ answers platform to rival Yahoo Answers and Quora. This gives them another string in their bow to rival Google for queries.
- Google, undoubtedly recognising these risks are rumored to be launching their own Facebook rival, in an attempt to wrest the ownership of identity from Zuckerberg’s sweaty paws.
With Google standing off with China on the eastern front, the battle on the home front is getting more and more interesting. Should Google just Keep Calm and Carry On, or are they right to take the battle to Facebook?
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Selected Further Reading from All Facebook:
