Facebook and Google’s Real-Time Search: What This Marriage Means
Your tire company is having a big sale. What’s the best way to spread the news? Here’s a method that just got very, very important to understand:
In a (rather fitting) Twitter announcement a few weeks ago, Google revealed that public status updates from Facebook will now be included in their search engine’s real-time search feature. It’s just the latest step in Google’s quest to perfect organization of and access to what seems like all the information in the entire world (also check out Kimber’s excellent take on Google’s new Personalized Search).
Real-time search is, essentially, instant access to the latest information about a particular subject popping up all over the web. When people post an update, you can instantly find it (not in all cases). The technique has been the gold at the end of the social media rainbow for a long time, but finally broke through recently thanks to Twitter’s massive success. Google jumped in a few months ago, allowing users to search through aggregated updates from platforms like Twitter, FriendFeed, and more — and now Facebook status updates.
“Search is a natural starting point for discovering the world’s information, and we strive to bring you the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices you use to access it.
Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.
Try searching for your favorite TV show, sporting event or the latest development on a recent government bill. Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it’s published on the web.”
You can access these updates via the “options” link located at the top of the search results page.
Compare this to a regular Google search — the process we all know and love and spend hours and hours trying to understand in order to help businesses secure a spot high up in the results — where the search engine tries to return the best possible information, but not necessarily the latest. When it comes to Internet marketing, the latest can sometimes be as effective as the best.
WebProNews puts the business impact this way:
“This seems to indicate that brands should be getting a good amount of play for Facebook appearances in Google’s real-time search results, and possibly in the real-time search results in general (due to Facebook’s huge user-base). Right now, Facebook isn’t dominating the results, but that is bound to change with it being the largest (by far) social network on the web…
This should also lead to Facebook Pages getting more fans, due to the increased exposure. Beware, however, that running a promotion on your Facebook Page may cost you ten thousand dollars, because Facebook’s policy guidelines indicate that you must get written approval from a Facebook account rep. In order to get one of those, you must spend that much in advertising, according to Eric Eldon of Inside Facebook.
So how will this affect the Dallas Internet marketing community?
Primarily, it shows just how important establishing a social media presence — including Facebook — should be for businesses. Now, a public status update on your business’ page won’t just reach your Facebook friends and fans, but potentially anyone, anywhere in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex (and beyond) using Google.
For example: you post a Facebook update about a sale your company is having on, let’s say, tires. If someone searches “Tire Sale in Dallas,” the idea is that your update will pop right up. It could be that easy but while this is a recent release we have seen the success vary on our customer base but believe as Google perfects the algorithm that this will soon change.
It’s a huge base, and an interactive marketing niche we’ll be pioneering at Masterlink Interactive throughout the near future. Stay tuned.
Stuart Frazier | Operations Manager for Masterlink Interactive
2 Comments
MCMarch 15th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
So… does this mean incorporating relevant news for that day in my blog/facebook/twitter will position me high up on google, without the need for elaborate SEO on my website. Instead I can make my posts relevant to key words for the day, and from there direct people to my site?
Stuart FrazierMarch 15th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
MC
Great question and thanks for commenting. The easy answer is “No”. While you might be able to ride the waves of “relevant news for that day” you might also be pushed into the deep recesses of Google by anyone also posting those relevant keywords to their personal Twitter and Facebook pages/Blogs/etc.
In addition this feature is still pretty new and has not received the full support of all search users. In many cases a user must select “past 24 hours” to see the most recent postings and in most cases users are just not aware of this option.
I have always liked the phrase “you don’t want to step over a $1 to pick up a quarter” and this ties into the fact that you are pursuing a certain field that pertains to your expertise..so I would ask, is your time best spent looking at popular keywords and writing blogs that contain these terms or focusing on what it is that you do best?
Besides, it sounds to me that looking at popular keywords and writing blogs about them IS an elaborate SEO strategy!