Search engine visibility: one more reason to participate in social networks

The modern plazas online are arguably social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Google+ and, particularly for those selling to other companies, LinkedIn. But before a company decides to dedicate time and resources to preside over social networks, not to mention the definition of necessary processes and metrics, there are a number of advantages and disadvantages worth assessing.

Social network pros and cons

The most evident disadvantage to social network participation are the predictable expenses, such as allocating people and investing in training to avoid getting off on the wrong foot. Social network participation will also require some changes to internal processes – such as integration of social media activity with sales and service departments, and the development of policies regarding the usage of social media by employees and associates. In assessing the benefits, there are the obvious ones, like increased customer visibility and an increase in virtual word of mouth promotion. There is also the opportunity to participate in discussions which are already happening about company products and services. Discussions taking place in the online plaza can be very useful not just to understand what is important to customers, but also to welcome suggestions from customers and potential customers. Another advantage to social media participation which is easy to overlook is the increased visibility it brings to a company and its products and services in search engines like Google and Bing.

Search engines become social

Indeed. For two years now search engines Google and Bing have incorporated social media activity information in the results of some searches – a significant step in the history of web search engines.

In the first generation web search engines the visibility of a web page depended primarily on factors related to the page, such as the keyword density. Google, with its famous PageRank, popularized the second generation of search engines which evaluated citations to a page from external sites, expressed as links, to determine the relevance and importance, or not, of a page.

Now search engines have an additional source for external citations — the links shared on social sites like Facebook, twitter, Friendfeed and Google+. But that’s not all! Social networks like Google+ and Facebook allow users to express their appreciation of a web page, Google with their +1 button, Facebook with a like button. Twitter has its favorite option which can be applied to a tweet containing a link. Search engines are experimenting with the integration of this information in their algorithms (formulas) that determine the results of a search.

But are search engines still important?

The web is so large that people often start a browsing session using Google, just to find a known site or to visit a previously viewed page. Unlike traditional advertising that interrupts people during their activities, people interact with a search engine when they have a need or a desire and are actively looking for solutions: a prefect time for a company to put itself forward as the best solution, thanks to the products and / or services it offers.

The 3 ways social media and search engines intersect

Currently, search engines use updates and approval signals (like, +1, favorite) from social media sites in three ways:

1. Real-time search: for some “hot” searches, search engines have fresh results from Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and/or other sources, results which were published on the web just seconds or minutes ago.
2. Social search: search results are customized for users logged-in based on their network of contacts in twitter, facebook, and/or Google+.
3. Results based on general approval: search engine result ranking may be due to the general appreciation expressed using social media buttons (+1, like, favorite) and link sharing.

Each point is explored in further detail in the following paragraphs.

Content indexed and searchable in real time

Figure 1: Realtime search in Google

In July 2009 Bing began to experiment with the integration of twitter updates from some selected twitter users. In October 2009, Bing reached an agreement with twitter to potentially index all tweets within a few seconds after publication on twitter. Twitter search is available through a dedicated URL. Initially limited to users in the United States, the twitter search is now available to Bing users in all English speaking markets (data is currently limited to the last few days). The same day the agreement between Bing and Twitter become public, Google announced its own similar initiative. Unlike Bing, Google integrated real time updates directly in standard web search results. Initially only available for English language searches on Google.com, Google extended the availability of real-time search to 40 languages, including Italian, in March 2010. In August 2010 Google also created an area dedicatedto real time searches. Although powered by multiple sources, the majority of realtime data was provided by twitter. A business agreement with twitter expired at the beginning of July 2011, leading Google to suspend its real time search feature. Google says it is their determination to restart realtime search as soon as possible, using data for the most part from Google+. Realtime search is sometimes confused with instant search results. Instant results are those search results that appear when a user types search keywords – the results themselves are not necessary fresh as in the case of realtime results.

How can companies increase traffic from real-time search?

Publicly published posts on Google+ are central to the future of Google’s realtime results. Companies thus need to participate in Google+ as soon as it officially opens to business profiles (imminent?). In the meantime, individuals can and should create personal profiles to better understand the dynamics of this social network. In general, the most popular profiles tend to be the ones that offer lots (information, advice, assistance), give recognition to others (references, sharing of materials posted by others) and, at least in appearance, expect little or nothing (little or no explicit sales efforts). “Seasoned” profiles with frequent updates that have been appreciated by others (shared posts, +1 clicks) are always a plus. Keep in mind that updates shared with a Google+ circle and not with the public can not appear in a search engine, a not so minor detail to consider.

If a company has a website in English, Facebook social media activity is also important for Bing and, to a lesser extent, for Blekko, an emerging search engine. The active participation in Facebook, Twitter, and particularly for B2B companies, LinkedIn, is recommended to be found in the internal search engines within these social networks.

Social search

Figure 2: Google Social Graph (Image: Google) A few days after the launch of real time search results, Google released its social search, a personalization of search results for users logged in to Google services, based on the network of a user’s contacts known to Google. This network of contacts, called the social graph, is created whenever social profiles, such as twitter and Google+, are connected to each other. Google recognizes not only that the profiles belong to the same person, but notices who else is connected to those profiles directly and by one additional degree of separation. Recognizing transparency concerns, Google allows users to see the composition of their social graph. Initially available only for searches performed on google.com in English, Google social search was extended to 19 languages, including Italian, on 19 May 2011.

Bing has its own social search, closely linked to Facebook, thanks to its investment in Facebook. Since May 2011, US users logged in to Facebook see personalized results based on “likes” expressed in their circle of Facebook “friends”. The results can include social annotations (“liked by x friends”). Other results are highlighted on the first page of results due to their appreciation by people in the searcher’s social network. These search results are in addition to the standard results already provided for the first page of results.

How can companies put social search to work for them?

To obtain greater visibility through social search in Bing and Google, two actions are recommended. The first is to expand the size of one’s own social networks, i.e. increase the number of people who follow the company’s social profiles, and/or those of its representatives, on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Do avoid confusing quantity with quality, however. There are companies that sell “friends” by the kilo; natural follower growth is by far preferable to any other quick growth scheme. The second action is to encourage people to express appreciation (like, +1, favorite tweet) of the company’s website pages and promote them through the use of the social buttons available from Facebook, Twitter and Google+.Certainly not all pages of a company website are good candidates for social sharing and appreciation – it is unlikely that users of social networks are going to be enthusiastic to promote a page of the type “Contact us”. Overall a company should ensure their website is rich in interesting and useful content, as perceived by their customers and potential customers.

Search results based on the overall level of approval

Search engines have begun to consider the satisfaction signals social network users express through various actions such as sharing links and appreciation votes (like, +1, favorite). These signals can affect the ranking of search engine results. Social network approval is a new, and potentially strong, ranking signal, an important citation, just as links have been for many years.

What should companies do to take advantage general appreciation votes?

The same suggestions apply as for Social Search.

Which search engines have data from which social networks?

The table below aims to clarify which social networks are taken into account by search engines.

	has immediate access to data (except private profiles) thanks to a payment estimated at $30 million	has same access to data as Google, but it does not seem that the data is very fresh.	has access to data through the public twitter API and / or by crawling twitter’s site. The API restricts access to only 350 calls per hour.	has same access as Google
	has access to a lot of data due to Microsoft’s investment stake in Facebook.	For users logged in to Blekko through Facebook, Blekko may add updates from “friends” if Blekko considers them relevant to the search. Blekko also offers results based on the like expressed by the network of friends on Facebook.	has access to public data on personal profiles as seen by a user not logged in, i.e. without any updates. Also has access to business pages including updates made by the page administrators but excluing updates by others.	Yandex receives a data stream from Facebook containing updates made on the business pages (but not personal profiles). The data is available in Yandex’s blog search blog.
	has access to public data through Google API and / or by crawling the site (Google makes it easy to crawl by providing a Sitemap).There haven’t been any particular announcements and the current level of indexing Google+ updates is limited.	has same access to public data as Bing. There haven’t been any particular announcements. Google+ indexing is limited.	owns the data and may use any data regarding links shared with the public and data signals for links shared in non-public circles. The depth of indexing appears to be very good. Google is already indexing this data for its internal Google+ search.	has same access to public data as Bing. There have not been any particular announcements. Google+ indexing is currently limited.

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