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.

Related posts:

1. Google Makes Facebook Pages a Higher Priority for Businesses
2. Facebook Page Owners Getting More Stats
3. 6 Tips to Succeed in Social Media

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.

Related posts:

1. How Google Rates Links from Facebook and Twitter
2. Is it Becoming Less Critical For Businesses to Have Websites?
3. Facebook Page Owners Getting More Stats

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.

Related posts:

1. More Complaints Filed Against Google In Germany
2. eBay Declared ‘09 Mobile Retailer Of The Year
3. eBay Testing New Search Features

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).

Related posts:

1. Does Google Buzz Deserve All the Criticism It’s Gotten?
2. Will Google Buzz Change the Social Media Game?
3. Monitoring Your Reputation with Google Buzz

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.

Related posts:

1. Video Site Veoh Files For Bankruptcy
2. Baidu CTO’s Resignation Announced
3. Facebook Cracks 350 Million Users, Adjusts Privacy Settings

Facebook recently made it a point to show users how to use the social network to keep up with the news. Users can simply become fans of their favorite news organizations’ pages (feel free to include ours in your mix), and group them in a “news” list just as they would create a group for friends or co-workers. The bottom line is; spending more time on Facebook getting news headlines is spending more time on Facebook period. There is also talk of Facebook  working on its own web email service. Again, more time spent on Facebook.

One way Facebook could capture even more of its users’ time, is if it introduced a “blog” tab. Facebook currently has a “notes” tab, and quite a few people do use this. It’s a similar concept, but what if it was given more prominence and renamed “blog?” A blog tab might keep Facebook users even longer. First of all, the users blogging with it would obviously be sticking around to write their posts. In addition, their friends and fans would be sticking around longer to read those posts, which would generally be much longer and require more time than the average status update.

Would more people become bloggers?

I suspect that the word “notes” doesn’t quite resonate the same as the word blog in the minds of many Facebook users, although for all intents and purposes, the feature operates like a blog. You can post longer-form content for your friends and fans to see, and they can comment on it, while it all remains in tact in one spot for future reference. Not only could the addition of a “blog” tab keep Facebook users around longer, but it could have a significant impact on the Blogosphere. Simply calling it a blog and having it available right from any user’s profile page might just inspire.

Is social media killing blogs?

No, but it’s hard to say that use of sites like Facebook and Twitter (and now Google Buzz) don’t lend to less blog posts being created. If nothing else, it’s simply a time issue. It is easy to push out a quick status update if you have something to say. It’s easier than blogging. For longer-form content, blogs are generally the better option, which is one reason they are still alive and well. But if Facebook had a blog tab, the social network could cut into the Blogosphere even more, given its huge userbase, while establishing itself as a go-to place for blogging (another area in which Facebook could compete with Google, I might add. Don’t forget that Google owns Blogger).

If Facebook did this, it is very unlikely that all current bloggers would immediately go running there to do their blogging, but Facebook users who may not already be blogging may find the urge to do so when that tab is right in front of their faces. And frankly, I’m confident many current bloggers would go running there. Facebook is a powerful tool for building an audience or expanding upon one.

It works on MySpace. Look at director Eli Roth’s blog, for example. He gets a lot of engagement there (although he hasn’t updated in several months). Facebook is another animal altogether, and its growth is unprecedented. Just look at Facebook’s latest round of stats.

Facebook is frequently adding and changing features, as any user can certainly attest (for better or for worse). It is not hard to imagine them doing something like this. For the record, the company has made no mention of going such a route, to my knowledge. There are currently ways to blog within and around Facebook if you look hard enough, but if Facebook made blogging a focal point, I think it could take off, and perhaps lend to the concept of Facebook as a news source, and even add greatly to the Blogosphere by encouraging more blogging.

Should Facebook Have a blog tab? Would you use it? Share your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Apps and Games Dashboards On the Way
2. Facebook Page Owners Getting More Stats
3. Google Makes Facebook Pages a Higher Priority for Businesses

Clearly a lot of people still care. If you fall into this category, you may be interested to know that YouTube will be streaming his press conference today live at 8am PT at YouTube.com/citizentube.”We’re experimenting with a live-streamed press conference on YouTube,” YouTube’s Chris Dale tells WebProNews. “Anyone in the world can watch the Tiger Woods press conference.”

Regardless of whether or not you will be tuning into the Tiger Woods press conference, the larger picture is that YouTube has simply become a legitimate news source (they do supply non-celebrity news as well). It has grown a lot since its launch. It used to be considered a great place to upload silly cat videos, and while it still is, it is also now a place to get breaking news as it happens.

This is not the first time YouTube has offered live streaming of a press conference. For example, back in April, they offered an Obama press conference on his first 100 days in office.

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, so a lot of people are bound to be watching Tiger’s words there. The more events YouTube streams live, the more people are likely to consider it as a go-to news source.

It is worth mentioning that a variety of other sites will be providing coverage as well, but considering the size of YouTube’s user-base, I’d say it has an advantage.

Related posts:

1. How Press Releases Can Be Great For Search
2. Iraq Comes to YouTube
3. YouTube Partner Program Turns Two

Is LinkedIn part of your strategy? Comment here.

We asked Howes why he thinks people don’t generally associate LinkedIn with driving traffic like they would with other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. “Their perception of LinkedIn is of a resume, or a way to get a job, but they don’t see all of the powerful tools within LinkedIn that allow you to drive traffic back to your site,” he tells WebProNews.

LinkedIn has announced that it is now being integrated into Microsoft Outlook, in one of the numerous convergences of social media and email that are increasingly taking place.

“Anytime you can increase the size of your network on LinkedIn, it will give you the opportunity to distribute your content to more people, therefore driving more traffic back to your site,” says Howes. “The Outlook integration is a way to connect more with your current LinkedIn contacts, and also help you grow you network as well.”

In some ways, LinkedIn traffic may even be more valuable than traffic from other social networks and sites. This is simply due to the generally professional nature of LinkedIn itself.

“You need to take into consideration that LinkedIn has the highest average household income per user over any other social networking site (even NYTimes.com and BusinessWeek.com readers),” Howes tells us. “That being said, these are business decision makers you are targeting with your traffic from LinkedIn. The network is for real, and it will only continue to grow in time as there are currently 60 million professionals.”

Now consider that LinkedIn could be one of your top traffic sources if you put enough effort into cultivating it as such. On a scale of 1-10, Howes says he’d rank it as a 7 or 8 on importance level for using it. “For me it is always one of the top 5 referring sites that drives traffic to my blogs,” he says.

Howes went through ten steps in a post at ProBlogger.net. While the post is geared at driving traffic to your blog, you may find the advice helpful for other types of sites. In summary (he goes into much more detail about each of these in the post), the ten steps are:

1. Complete your profile.
2. Increase you connections.
3. Customize your website links.
4. Answer questions.
5. Update your status.
6. Join niche groups.
7. Post comments in groups.
8. Add RSS feeds to groups.
9. Create a group.
10. Add the blog application to your profile.

Now that LinkedIn can be integrated into Microsoft Outlook, I would suggest looking at getting that set up as well (steps here), if you want to get serious about including LinkedIn in your traffic strategy.

Of course there are plenty of other ways to use LinkedIn as a tool to increase the success of your business. As Howes lists, you can sell products, find new clients/employees, generate leads, receive funding, obtain sponsorships, sell tickets to events, as get press coverage to name a few.

Have you considered LinkedIn’s potential as a significant traffic source? Do you already get significant traffic from LinkedIn? Let us know.

Related posts:

1. LinkedIn Allows Users To Edit Profile Layouts
2. LinkedIn Greets 60 Millionth Member
3. Driving Traffic with MapQuest and its New Search Engine

What all of this means is that Google is working to make Buzz content something that can be used in as many services as possible, while letting as many services as possible come into Buzz.

“The idea is that someday, any host on the web should be able to implement these open protocols and send messages back and forth in real time with users from any network, without any one company in the middle,” says Google software engineer DeWitt Clinton. “The web contains the social graph, the protocols are standard web protocols, the messages can contain whatever crazy stuff people think to put in them. Google Buzz will be just another node (a very good node, I hope) among many peers. Users of any two systems should be able to send updates back and forth, federate comments, share photos, send @replies, etc., without needing Google in the middle and without using a Google-specific protocol or format.”

Google has most recently turned on WebFinger in Gmail (via RRW). WebFinger is described as being about making email addresses more valuable, by letting people attach metadata to them. According to the WebFinger page at Google Code, that can include things like:

- public profile data
- pointer to identity provider (e.g. OpenID server)
- a public key
- other services used by that email address (e.g. Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, Twitter, Facebook, and usernames for each)
- a URL to an avatar
- profile data (nickname, full name, etc)
- whether the email address is also a JID, or explicitly declare that it’s NOT an email, and ONLY a JID, or any combination to disambiguate all the addresses that look like something@somewhere.com
- or even a public declaration that the email address doesn’t have public metadata, but has a pointer to an endpoint that, provided authentication, will tell you some protected metadata, depending on who you authenticate as.

WebFinger is enabled for all Gmail/Google Profiles with public profiles. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick discusses more technical details about it here.

Related posts:

1. Introducing Google Buzz
2. Will Google Buzz Change the Social Media Game?
3. Google Buzz Draws New Content-Scraping Controversy

LinkedIn had just 55 million members as of December 17th, so this new declaration means it’s grown by a little more than nine percent in less than two months (which translates to a rate of at least 109 percent per year).  That increase in size is, it should be needless to say, impressive.

Patrick Crane’s announcement had some positive implications regarding LinkedIn’s reach, too.  Consider that the 60 millionth member doesn’t live in Silicon Valley or some other part of California.  Instead, he (or she) is located several thousand miles away in the Netherlands.

Of course, for the sake of putting things in perspective, we should note that Facebook passed the 400 million user mark this month.  Also, about 70 percent of Facebook’s members live outside the U.S.  So it’s not like LinkedIn has captured the global social/professional networking crown.

Just the same, LinkedIn has made some impressive strides, and within its niche, is certainly putting some space between itself and its competitors.  Hat tip goes to Leena Rao.

Related posts:

1. LinkedIn Allows Users To Edit Profile Layouts
2. LinkedIn Can Be One of Your Most Valuable Traffic Sources
3. Facebook Cracks 350 Million Users, Adjusts Privacy Settings