Yesterday we were searching on Facebook for the phrase “phoenix restaurant” to see what Facebook pages would show up for that phrase. We noticed a new search result showing up in Facebook search (as shown below) that could spell trouble (or at least create a new headache) for Google.
Few would argue how powerful Google.com search is so the concept of Facebook search killing Google is a stretch. But instead start learning how this Facebook search change can be leveraged by your business as an additional opportunity for increasing awareness.
When Facebook launched the OpenGraph API at the annual f8 conference about 2 months ago, Facebook created a platform that allows sites and apps to share information about users in order to tailor offers, features and services to each one’s interests and tastes — even if that individual has never visited the site before.
When you’re signed on to Facebook, participating websites like CNN.com will display information, goods and services tailored specifically to your interests — without requiring you to sign in at that website or provide it with any information.
For websites to leverage the new Facebook OpenGraph API it requires just a few lines of code added to your website. When we 1st heard about this we immediately thought this could create new opportunities for search engine optimization.
By placing the OpenGraph code on your site, Facebook can crawl for specific information and our prediction (which is now proved to be true) off Facebook results would start to show on Facebook search. There is a cool feature on Facebook called URl Linter and based on the example above with Yellow Pages you can see what Facebook is crawling.
This is all very exciting; however, Facebook will need to quickly improve the relevancy of results if they want people to start using Facebook search instead of Google.com. With the Yellow Pages example above if you clicked on the link it would send you to the Canada Yellow Pages showing a Phoenix Restaurant.
Facebook know’s my information (clearly from Phoenix, Arizona) so the results should only show sources that will send me to a website talking about restaurants in Phoenix Arizona. Facebook has not officially announced this change so it is quite possible we stumbled across Facebook testing so let’s not start bashing this.
We encourage you to watch this closely to see what Facebook has in store with web search. In addition, take the time to learn about Facebook’s OpenGraph API and how you should consider adding the Facebook meta code to your website so when (not IF) Facebook fully launches web search features your site will start showing up. What are your thoughts around this? Are you seeing results showing up in Facebook for non on Facebook.com results?
Connect with iClick Solutions website, blog, RSS, Twitter, or FacebookRelated posts:
