Facebook More Popular Than Google: So?
According to Hitwise, Facebook just became more popular than Google Search.
become the most visited website for the week. Facebook.com recently reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th. The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame. Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week
Not sure of HitWises methodology – why aren’t they comparing all Google’s web functions, including Maps and Mail? – but good on Facebook! For a site that didn’t exist in 2003, that is quite some achievement.
What does this mean for the future of search marketing?
Not much.
Given the lock-in for return visits, it’s unsurprising that Facebook might receive more visits than a search engine. However, the most important aspect of different channels, as far as a web marketer is concerned, is: does the traffic convert to cash at some point?
Measure Success
Social Media Marketing, like SEO, is a tatic. However, if the tactic don’t translate into more business, then it’s a waste of time. Whatever channel you use, it is important to establish KPIs – key performance indicators – that measure the effectiveness of your tactics, and directly relate to the success of you business.
For example, one of the KPIs often mentioned in SMM is volume metrics, such as number of followers, subscribers etc. If we were to relate this metric back to our business objectives, we’d ask how does having a higher number of followers, or people claiming to be followers, result in more business? How many of those followers are really engaging with you? Or are they, literally, just making up the numbers?
I’ve seen social media companies fudge this aspect. Some play around with the term ROI, changing the “I” from “investment” to “influence”, or to “interest”, and use the number of followers as evidence of the level of interest in a clients services or brand.
The bottom line is the golden KPI. It can become blurred in bigger organizations, but for the little guy, it is crucial.
Volume Metrics Can Be Deceiving
Search marketers know that the volume game can be an illusion when it comes to making money.
“Jokes” may be a very popular keyword term, but it’s not making people any money because there is no commercial intent. “Second mortgages” is not a particularly popular term in terms of volume, but is lucrative as it has clear commercial intent. A high position for second mortgages in search rankings will make you money.
Conversely, how difficult would it be to get buzz around the term “second mortgages” via social media? Sure, with some inventive twisting and disguising of the true message it could be done, but really, it’s pushing water uphill. The social environment isn’t really suited to such a message.
Choose The Right Environment
The two channels are like apples and oranges.
Different environments work for different messages. Social media is great for generating awareness, getting people talking, and when integrated with an SEO strategy can be a great way of getting links. Primarily, it’s a brand strategy. However, because it is a social environment, there is less tolerance of overt commercial activity that in direct channels.
Typical social media measurements include:
- Business outcomes – can you link the campaign to specific interactions, such as sales?
- Influencer Reach – how many influencers picked up on your message and spread it?
- Audience Reach – how many visitors saw your message? Link this metric to…
- Engagement – how many of those people who saw you message contacted you, or took a desired action?
Conversely, SEO isn’t much use for building brand awareness or encouraging people to talk about your message. The environment is similar to direct marketing. It is well suited to direct response and commercial activity, as the intent of the user can be determined, and if that intent is commercial, then people welcome commercial messages.
What Is Your Business
Hanging out and being cool on Facebook isn’t a business 
Business on the web typically falls into one of nine groups. Which is yours?
- Brokerage – bringing buyers and sellers together
- Advertising – displaying/selling advertising
- Infomediary – run programs such as ad networks
- Merchant – sell stuff
- Manufacturer (Direct) – make and sell stuff
- Affiliate – sell other peoples stuff and take a commission
- Community – leverage your community to sell something else
- Subscription – sell content/training on an on-going basis
- Utility – pay as you go usage
Decide which business you are in. When deciding on marketing and advertising tactics, ask yourself which environment is best suited to developing your business, then develop KPIs that support that business. You key KPI should be the bottom line – either this activity returns more money than you spend, or it doesn’t.
Google Makes Facebook Pages a Higher Priority for Businesses
Filed under: Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing
Google announced via Twitter this week, that public status updates from Facebook are now included in the search engine’s real-time search feature. That means the largest social network in the world is getting play in Google’s real-time search alongside Twitter, MySpace, and others, and these real-time results are often featured prominently on the first page of search results for the hottest queries.
Apparently only updates from Facebook PAGES are indexed, and according to Danny Sullivan, that includes links, status updates, photos, videos shared by page owners (not comments made by the fans). Any Facebook update (from regular user profiles) can be shared publicly, so I wonder why these aren’t being pulled. Results from Twitter and other places aren’t only from branded sources.
>>Become a fan of WebProNews on Facebook <<
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.
A lot of brands who don’t have Facebook pages in place are likely going to consider this a new reason to create one. Here are some tips for making a good one and promoting it.
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.
Now Google’s real-time search results include (as listed by Sullivan) Facebook, MySpace, Twiter, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca, TwitArmy, Google News links, Google Blog Search links, new web pages, and freshly updated pages. At this point, Google generally only shows the real-time results for newsy/trending topics.
Note: At the Online Marketing Summit out in San Diego, WebProNews talked about a different kind of real-time search that involves local businesses, with RateItAll president Lawrence Coburn. It’s not local search as you would traditionally think of it, but it involves location, which one might consider a new kind of query.
eBay-PayPal Tie-Up Draws Complaints In Germany
This has not been a great week for American tech companies trying to do business in Europe. First, Google got in trouble over allegedly anticompetitive search practices and its policy on Street View data retention. Now, German antitrust authorities are looking at the way in which eBay has supported PayPal.
John Oates explained earlier today, “eBay.de recently asked sellers with low feedback points to offer PayPal. The company justified the move because it said the number of bad buying experiences is twice as high from sellers with less than 50 feedback points than the average.”
But some people are less than pleased with the change, and as a result, “[T]he German Federal Cartel Office is investigating complaints made against eBay over this tying policy.”
Since the promotion of PayPal should increase its market share and help eBay earn more money, they may have a point. eBay’s liable to have trouble arguing that there’s no other way it could protect buyers, at least.
As always, we’ll see what happens. German authorities haven’t yet launched a full investigation or given an indication which way they’re leaning. eBay, for its part, is still more in “dialogue” than “sound the alarm” mode.
Google Buzz Draws New Content-Scraping Controversy
Update 2: A Google spokesperson says the full-text issue is not a Google-specific problem. “It is possible for Bloggers to prevent their full content from showing in Buzz just like in Reader –it depends on how they set up their feed. If a blog owner wants to not show their whole blog, they have to use whatever tools they are using to create their feed to set it to not syndicate the entire post.”
Update: So far, Google has referred me to the same response they gave Stay, but I’ve inquired further. We’ll keep you posted.
Original Article: If you were under the impression that the controversy surrounding Google Buzz was starting to die down, think again. So far, we’ve mostly heard about privacy issues, which Google has publicly addressed. They’ve also made changes based on user feedback. Now, we’re hearing about possible copyright issues. Google appears to be republishing full articles without permission, and stripping out any ads that may be in those articles.
One can easily see why any blogger or publisher wouldn’t be very pleased with this scenario. Not only are they serving up full articles that others have written without sending authors the traffic or even ad clicks, but if a user reads the article through Buzz within their Gmail account, they will likely see the ads Google itself serves.
Blogger Jesse Stay of Stay N’ Alive brings the subject up in a post, claiming that this is exactly what is happening to his content. However, Google did respond to him, saying they would “have the ad scraping issue fixed by next week.” That would solve one problem, but presumably, this doesn’t change the fact that they are showing full article text, which is an interesting choice on Google’s part, considering the controversy surrounding how Google News aggregates publishers’ content.
That is a different situation entirely, because Google News does not publish full articles (unless they come from one of their partners). They simply provide a title, small snippet, and link to the original source, hence driving traffic to that source. Based on Stay’s story, Google will not likely be driving much traffic by showing full articles in Buzz. We’ve contacted Google for comment on this (we’ll post when we receive it).
One might compare reading an article through Buzz to reading one through a feed reader, like Google Reader. Sometimes you can read a feed in its full text, but the author has the ability to prevent this. With Buzz, the full-text articles appear to be coming simply from people sharing the articles, which is out of the author’s control (we asked Google if their is a way authors can prevent this…again, we’ll post a response when we receive it).
Baidu Receives $50 Million To Build Video Site
The creation of the Chinese equivalent of Hulu is now officially underway. Providence Equity Partners, which invested $100 million in the original American video site, will give Baidu $50 million to create Qiyi.com. Qiyi should similarly offer premium content and rely on ad revenue.
Qiyi will indeed be a completely by-the-book operation, judging from an “About Us” section that’s in English. It explained, “Qiyi will strictly abide by copyright laws and administrative regulations, to take copyright protection measures to protect the legitimate rights and interests of copyright holders.”
Then another paragraph later added, “Qiyi keeps making efforts . . . to spread the advanced socialism culture by undertaking its social responsibility as an outstanding corporate citizen. Qiyi is playing a positive role in developing a harmonious society.”
Unfortunately, not a lot else is known about the project. The site’s official launch date hasn’t been publicized, and other details (relating to advertisers’ identities, hours of content available, and so forth) are also unavailable.
One important thing that’s been made clear, at least, is the fact that Baidu will retain majority ownership in Qiyi despite Providence’s large investment.