{"id":1103,"date":"2023-03-05T15:10:54","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T15:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/?p=1103"},"modified":"2023-03-05T15:10:54","modified_gmt":"2023-03-05T15:10:54","slug":"shocker-according-to-facebook-talking-points-facebook-is-the-future-of-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/shocker-according-to-facebook-talking-points-facebook-is-the-future-of-search\/","title":{"rendered":"Shocker: According To Facebook Talking Points, Facebook Is The Future Of Search"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I like Jesse Stay (and am a reader of\u00a0his blog) and wasn\u2019t initially going to blog this.\u00a0 But thinking about it further, and as someone who works both on social media and SEO clients\/projects, I felt a need to weigh in and not leave this conversation unchecked.<\/p>\n

Jesse\u00a0wrote a post\u00a0titled \u201cFacebook and the new SEO.\u201d\u00a0 And I feel like it misunderstands both SEO and the motivations of someone searching the web in the first place.\u00a0 Very similar to how Ben Elowitz misunderstands Google and\u00a0thinks media somehow needs to be \u201csaved\u201d from search\u00a0by Facebook.\u00a0 Let\u2019s dig into it.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the group that should be paying most attention though are those that currently pay attention to SEO for their company, or the brands they represent. \u00a0With Facebook\u2019s entry into the search space last week, Facebook should now be part of every company\u2019s SEO plan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The answer to this at the moment is a tentative \u201cmaybe.\u201d\u00a0 It is premature to say that Facebook\u2019s search engine will get used in any degree of scale for searches other than those seeking things directly in the network, such as people or other objects within the social graph.\u00a0 While Facebook search is growing (as with more users, it naturally would) user behavior of the web is still Google search as the default.\u00a0 The branding, relevance and sheer quality of Google\u2019s core product is not going to get trampled simply because another popular web product starts hyping their search.\u00a0 Ask Bing\/MSN how well that went \u2014 and they also have a 9 figure user base they get to tap (Hotmail has\u00a0343 million users globally).<\/p>\n

Just last week, Mark Zuckerberg was quite clear when he said, announcing Facebook\u2019s new Open Graph Protocol, that Facebook was working to make \u201cpeople index the web\u201d. \u00a0No longer are the days of complex algorithms, PhDs focusing on the fastest and most relevant search results through code.\u00a0 What better way to provide relevant content and experience for what people are looking for, and often even when they don\u2019t even know they need it, than through their friends\u2019 activity on Social Networks. \u00a0Search is now all about relevancy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This paragraph just irks me.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a vision statement of the Facebook CEO echoed by a Facebook fan.\u00a0 Their PR team must be proud that influencers such as Jesse simply quote talking points that were obviously crafted to position Facebook against Google.\u00a0 Zuckerberg and his team are consistently\u00a0masterful at manipulating the media.\u00a0 As a PR professional myself, I do have to give them kudos for that.<\/p>\n

But to explain why this is wrong:\u00a0 the web\u2019s link graph\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0already to a good degree people-driven.\u00a0 The most valuable links on the web are not built by robots, they\u2019re built by humans.\u00a0 Also, Google already takes social signals into account when ranking content, so this is not a new innovation to Facebook.\u00a0 Lastly \u2013 search is\u00a0already<\/em>\u00a0all about relevancy.\u00a0 A relevancy driven by an algorithm we as humans have helped shape.\u00a0 Google improved and iterated on their algo for years to deliver a ridiculously strong product.\u00a0 It\u2019s not as if Google is blind to everything happening on the web from a social standpoint.<\/p>\n

This paragraph is written as if Google search sucks and Facebook is the web\u2019s saving grace from a search standpoint.\u00a0 I\u2019ll let you pause and think about just how eloquently Google\u00a0has already solved<\/em>\u00a0the problem of web search.\u00a0 If you think Facebook is going to define a more relevant algorithm simply through a \u201clike relevancy\u201d you\u2019d have to be drinking some serious Facebook Kool-Aid.\u00a0 Solving web search is not as simple as some of the tech pundits make it out to be.<\/p>\n

SEO is something that is now a standard part of any businesses web budget. \u00a0It\u2019s simple<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 you build common strategies for formulating your content to appear properly in Google and others\u2019 search results. \u00a0You try to guess the keywords\u00a0<\/em>you want your website to appear high under, and adapt the content of your site to make finding it in search engine results much easier.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Emphasis on \u201cIt\u2019s simple<\/strong>\u201d and \u201cYou try to guess the keywords<\/strong>\u201d mine \u2013 SEOs: the comments are yours!)<\/p>\n

I pointed out in the comments on Jesse\u2019s site just how absurd this statement was.\u00a0 You don\u2019t \u201ctry to guess\u201d the keywords you want your website to appear higher under.\u00a0 If you do, that\u2019s not SEO, that\u2019s flying blindly.\u00a0 Also, as someone who works on enterprise level SEO projects, I have to laugh at the \u201cit\u2019s simple\u201d statement. My point with this is that Jesse is writing an article about how Facebook is going to usurp Google and SEOs should take notice, and yet doesn\u2019t quite grasp SEO himself.<\/p>\n

Facebook has made it clear that this is a search game. \u00a0The release of Open Graph Protocol makes this clearer, and you should be paying attention. \u00a0Through your likes, Facebook now has the potential to provide near exact matches of advertising towards exactly what you\u2019re looking for, without you even knowing you needed it. \u00a0That, my friends, is the holy grail of advertising.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s contextual advertising.\u00a0 And Google is already doing that \u2013 as are other web advertising networks.\u00a0 The thing is, contextual advertising isn\u2019t necessarily as valuable as search advertising because of the lack of intent.\u00a0 Just because I \u201clike\u201d something or I\u2019m reading content on a page is not necessarily an indicator I\u2019m actually seeking that product out.\u00a0 Consider how blind we are to most text link ads on most pages that are contextual.\u00a0 Yet\u00a0search ads are a different story.<\/p>\n

Facebook just did something\u00a0huge<\/em>\u00a0last week. \u00a0It is now in the interest of every single company out there to be getting their brand visible in the Facebook search so this can happen. \u00a0This is a search game more than it is social. \u00a0Facebook just made it a whole heck of a lot more valuable for you to be investing in SEO, but this time it\u2019s on Facebook\u2019s terms, not Google\u2019s, and in the end everyone wins.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even if this statement was true, I don\u2019t see why \u201ceveryone wins\u201d because it\u2019s on Facebook\u2019s terms, not Google\u2019s.\u00a0 There is absolutely no logic to that statement unless you are more of a fan of Facebook than Google.<\/p>\n

If Facebook isn\u2019t currently a part of your company\u2019s SEO strategy it\u2019s time to start re-thinking what SEO means to you and your company. \u00a0Like it or not,\u00a0Facebook<\/em>\u00a0is the new SEO.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rand at SEOmoz for already\u00a0debunked this statement\u00a0nicely.\u00a0 But further, unless users even start to associate Facebook with web search, this statement is flawed without further argument.\u00a0 Consumers clearly prefer Google, as say the analytics results of any properly optimized website and\u00a0search stat numbers.\u00a0 Facebook is definitely a high value referral source and a great\u00a0outpost\u00a0for your social strategy, but to say \u201cFacebook is the new SEO\u201d is pure\u00a0linkbait\u00a0and nothing more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like Jesse Stay (and am a reader of\u00a0his blog) and wasn\u2019t initially going to blog this.\u00a0 But thinking about … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-marketing-and-pr","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions\/1105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}