Google and Facebook moving towards each other: how will it affect your SEO and online marketing?

Google and Facebook have long been two of the most innovative inventive companies on the block and also the most competitive with each other. More people spend their time either updating their status on Facebook or Google-ing something or other than any other search activity. For a long time now Google has dominated in the search engine business and Facebook in the social networking business but at the same time they have always had one eye on each other. With Google’s takeover of YouTube and the fact that YouTube is now considered the 2nd Search Engine with more searches than Bing or Yahoo it’s no wonder FaceBook are looking to break into the search engine business. With FaceBook now claiming to have over 1billion users each month it’s no wonder they are looking to offer that captive market a search engine alternative to keep them on Facebook and off Google.

Graph Search from Facebook

Facebook’s new search engine “Graph Search” (click here for more details https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch) will work in a very different way for Google but that is the point. If you are looking for an article on how to fix your washing machine then it will probably never be the place for to look. But if you are looking for a restaurant, some new music or some ideas on entertainment it will be perfect. Graph Search uses the data from you and your friends to produce results based on what people “like” on Facebook or “share”. For a long time this has been the benefit of marketing on Facebook that you can advertise based on what people do for a living, what people like, where they live and so force whereas on Google you promote based on what people search for. This new search technology (when it finally arrives) will no doubt give online advertisers and marketers more ability to market to this captive audience but it has caused quite a stir and concern when it comes to online privacy. With the Beta testing of this new technology being widely documented by one, now well known, blog by Tom Scott Actual Facebook Graph Searches. Here Tom has found some interesting, sometimes very humorous and far too often very scary findings. Some worrying searches he has found are as follows:

• Mothers of Jews that like Bacon
• Current Employers of People who like Racism
• Spouses of Married people who like Ashley Madison (apparently the service for Married people that want to have affairs :-/ )
• Single Women who like men, live nearby and like getting drunk

All these are obviously of concern, plus concerns about the privacy and protection of children have caused the people at Facebook and especially Mark Zuckerberg some serious issues and possibly put the official launch of Graph Search back by a few months. The clever bods at Facebook will no doubt get there in the end and it will be fun to see what a storm this will make when released and realised by the general public.

Google+

Google too have moved towards Facebook and the social network business with Google plus with less controversy with CEO Larry Page recently announcing their bypassing 100 million users with strong growth. But even with that said Google+ does not appear to be breaking into the Social Network market with growth being contributed to Google’s forcing membership on users of other products and the service continues to get slated in the press. With reports of Google favouring posts and articles in Google+ for search engine results along with other social media platforms how does all of the above affect your online marketing and SEO strategy? In our next article we will explain how this has changed the world of SEO and online marketing and what this means to your plans.