Facebook Search Engine Feature

If you’ve had any consultancy from me over the last 12 months you’ll know the importance I place on social media. If you haven’t, here’s the news. SEO is no longer the sole focus of healthy sites.  Along with this I explain to people why they should reduce their reliance on Google: it’s apt to do as it pleases. If you rely too heavily on any one source for traffic you could see your plans falls apart if you fall on the wrong side of an algorithm update. Does this mean you should stop SEO? No far from it, you just need to use some common sense.  Should your companies business model and success be purely dependant on one third party company? Definitely not!

The Social Media Wars

The way people use the web is changing rapidly. In 2013 it’s entirely possible there will be more mobile users than people surfing the web using their laptop or PC.  Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are already easy to use on mobile devices.

Google’s decision to launch Google + – not its first attempt at social marketing – is significant for a number of reasons. It’s prompted many people to speculate how social media sites like Facebook might respond. Be in no doubt Google believes social media is critical and will grow in importance. There could be a time, and I am sticking my neck out here, when social media signals replace links as the basis for Google’s algorithm. Food for thought. It may be some time off but Google is all for a ‘human’ ran website’.
Google is also placing a high priority on its Adwords’ products, in many respects Google’s cash cow. This may explain why people are hinting that Google’s search results aren’t as helpful as they used to be.

Future Development of Facebook

All this leads me to pick up on one of the earlier points made above about how social media sites may develop in the future.  What if Facebook responds to Google’s move by developing its own search engine? After all, the newly listed Facebook has to turn its attention to ways it can earn revenue.

It’s been known for about six months that Facebook has a team of engineers working on making vast improvements to the search engine within the site.  Think of this as first base. There’s really no knowing whether it could evolve to challenge Google. But who would bet against it?

Facebook is in an almost unique position to be able to satisfy search queries. It already has billions of users and has a focus on user demographics and interests and even their likes and dislikes. Add in some of Google’s personalisation technology and you could have a highly targeted search engine.

Building A Facebook Presence

Success online means anticipating future developments as best you can. Now is the time to be developing a presence on Facebook.  It’s not as simple as just opening an account and posting. Your Facebook marketing efforts have to be integrated with your other marketing.
If you would like to have a chat about how Facebook Marketing could help your business or any other queries on social media please email me.