Search engine marketing has long regarded social media with a combination of interest and scepticism, with many holding judgement until the major search engines launch a complete version of their “social search” technology.
However, the integration of search and social media could arrive sooner than expected, as the popularity of Facebook search is suddenly boosted over the month of February.
Last month, Facebook recorded around 436 million search queries in the US. According to ComScore’s figures, this is an impressive gain of 10% – in a month when the other 19 sites listed in the “Expanded search query report” saw a net loss.
Facebook’s success has been attributed to a recent redesign of its home page. The search box has been moved from the right hand side of the page to the middle of the header, giving it added visibility and placing it adjacent to notifications and status updates from the social network.
Although 436 million searches is minuscule compared to Google’s 13.5 billion search queries, this increase is still a significant jump for Facebook – particularly considering the massive growth in the Facebook user base over the past year. If search popularity continues to grow, then more marketers may be attracted to PPC advertising on Facebook websearch, rather than on social media marketing campaigns through content generation on fan pages and brand profiles; this is often regarded as of questionable ROI due to the difficulty in tracking conversions.
Additionally, the growth of Facebook web search is effectively a growth for Bing. Though not included in Bing’s overall market share, Microsoft’s search engine is the technology that powers Facebook web search and it’s AdCentre platform (the MS version of AdWords) serves paid advertisements in search results. It is possible that Microsoft may gain ground in search engine marketing circles through partnership deals such as this and the Yahoo! deal, rather than by taking on Google directly.
