Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings

By Chris Crum


Social Media for SEO is Not Just About Links Anymore


Disclaimer: This article was originally written before Google made its announcement, and has been updated to reflect that.



Google and Microsoft have both inked deals with Twitter and Microsoft has also inked one with Facebook to integrate Twitter and Facebook updates into Bing search results. Google will be adding tweets to search results.

Google's Marissa Mayer says, " We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information."

There is a good chance that Google will be making a similar deal with Facebook, but even if they don't, their deal with Twitter and Bing's deals with both make it all the more important for marketers to be found in real-time searches and Facebook/Twitter in general.



A while back WebProNews compiled a list of five tips for getting found in real-time searches, which basically boils down to staying in the conversation for relevant topics that people are searching for. The tips were:

1. Use keywords
2. Talk about timely events
3. Have a lot of followers
4. Promote conversation
5. Include calls to engagement

I elaborated on each of these in the previous article. Social media is viral by nature, and real-time search is nothing more than putting things in chronological order. You have to keep people talking to stay relevant "right now."

That said, we don't know all the details about how Google and Bing will be integrating its Twitter and Facebook results into the rest of their results yet. Bing has made available a beta tool for people to mess around with for searching tweets with the search engine. "You can now search for what people are saying all over the web about breaking news topics, your favorite celebrity, hometown sports team, and anything else you use Twitter to stay on top of today," says Paul Yiu of Bing's Social Search team.
Bing - Twitter search

A spokesperson for Microsoft tells WebProNews, more specifically, the new Twitter developments in Bing include:

* A real-time index of the Tweets that match your search queries in results. This feature makes it easier to follow what’s going on by reducing the amount of duplicates, spam, and adult content.
* Giving you the option to rank tweets either by most recent or by “best match,” where we consider a Tweeter’s popularity, interestingness of the tweet, and other indicators of quality and trustworthiness.
* Providing the top links shared on Twitter around your specific search query by showcasing a few of the most relevant tweets. Additionally, Bing automatically expands those small URLs (like bit.ly) to enable you to understand what people are tweeting about. Instead of showing standard search result captions, we select 2 top tweets to give users a glimpse of the sentiment around the shared link.



Bing already displays some Tweets for certain people results at the very top of the regular web search results page. That's a good place to appear. Here is a little info about how they rank tweets in their Twitter search.

Google announced a new Google labs project that injects social media into its own search results. This was also announced at the Web 2.0 Summit. Ben Parr with Mashable has the details from Mayer:

- The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr (Flickr) photos or their status updates. It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results.

- These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.

- They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.

- It will launch in Google Labs in the next few weeks.

The deals with Microsoft and Google make social media marketing all the more important to marketing in general, and specifically search engine marketing. Where social media has generally fit into the SEO equation thus far, has been the promotion of content, which inspires links and conversation, which can in turn help search engine rankings.

Now, if status updates and tweets become directly integrated into search results in Universal Search-type fashion, it will be not only be about promotion and outside links, it will be about direct exposure right in the results, not unlike the importance of online video right now (as you're probably aware, videos are often displayed prominently on the first page of Google results).

Now, forgetting about Google for a moment, pretend that the deals with Microsoft are the only ones that happened. You may also recall that Microsoft has a certain deal in the works with Yahoo. This (if everything goes according to plan) will see Bing results taking over Yahoo's own. Yahoo may still be controlling the front-end of its search, but Bing will be controlling the back-end. Ranking for Bing will mean ranking for Yahoo.



So with Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook deals all in place for Bing, getting found in real-time searches may not only mean getting found in Twitter searches, Facebook searches, and such. It may also mean getting found in Bing searches and in Yahoo searches. That's pretty much the meat of the non-Google U.S. search market.

Now let's bring Google back into the equation. It has a deal with Twitter and may very well have one with Facebook before long. Kara Swisher who broke the news about Microsoft's deals says Google's been talking with both social networks. Still think real-time search and social media are not worth your time?

Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings

Ready To Maximise Your SEO Exposure?

Tired of pouring valuable time and money into your Google SEO campaign only to find that it gets your business nowhere, and fast? With Google being the mega-giant of the online search world, it's easy to believe that the world of search begins and ends there. While many beginner marketers spend the majority of their resources on Google, and minimise their commitments elsewhere, the smartest marketers are focusing on the SEO possibilities that other search engines can provide, and actively ignoring Google entirely.

How can this possible help your business? With Google playing such a pivotal role in online search, it's not difficult to think that it's the most important place for your business to be. While it's a highly valuable search engine to rank on, it's not the end of the world for your business to go somewhere else. With Google being so massively competitive, you can often get a better ROI on other search websites, and with less effort and expenses you can easily dominate the online search rankings and maximise your conversions.

Ever used Yahoo and Bing? Or course you have. While they're not the giant search engines that Google is, they have impressive market share and a loyal base of searchers that continually use them. Not only this, the non-Google search engines often have higher converting traffic, significantly different demographics, and an audience with remarkably higher disposable income than most of the Google-sphere. If you want to truly target the most important customers, it's often best to look outside of Google.

This free report explains both the reasons to look outside of Google for your search engine optimisation campaigns, the benefits that other search providers can offer, and the best way to get around search engine loopholes and rules. When you need to build a great SEO campaign, it's often best to be original and remarkable. By pushing your resources outside of Google, you can achieve just that. Don't run with the crowd, have your marketing campaign stand out on its own and lead your business to massive online earnings. This free report explains all you need to know, and is concise and easy for any marketer to read.

Click Here To Download Your Free SEO Loophole Report

These same strategies have been used to gain number one rankings on Yahoo, Bing, and other leading search engines. Whether you're a small time marketer or a giant of the internet marketing world, you can produce massive conversions and long-term customers simply by appealing to different search demographics outside of Google.

Click Here To Download Your Free SEO Loophole Report





Ready To Maximise Your SEO Exposure?

Richard Ball critical of Yahoo’s Search Marketing

Search engine marketing specialist Richard Ball has been critical of Yahoo’s Search Marketing business. Their practice of placing search ads on their distribution network, even when advertisers opt out of content matching for their campaigns, has led to some of Ball’s clients receiving lots of clicks through sites he calls “low quality” Yahoo distribution partners.
Yahoo does not offer an option for advertisers to place ads only on their properties. Ball thinks that the issue is so much of a problem that he has chosen to end his status as a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador. Ball said, “Seems odd that you can’t buy only search.yahoo.com ads via Yahoo! Search Marketing. You have to accept ad distribution to their partner network, which is rife with syndication fraud.”

Richard Ball critical of Yahoo’s Search Marketing

Acquisition Rumors (Re)surround Facebook

By Doug Caverly

Yahoo "needs them," Zuckerberg fond of Spotify

Facebook might soon be involved in another acquisition. New analyses/rumors are swirling, anyway, with one person suggesting that Facebook should be bought, and another indicating that the social networking company could extend an offer to a smaller firm.

Let's start with the idea of Facebook itself getting acquired. Scott Moritz, a senior writer at TheStreet.com, appeared in a video this morning saying that both Google and Microsoft would be smart to acquire Facebook. He then continued, "Yahoo really is the one, I think . . . it needs them the most."

Moritz supported his argument by saying that both Facebook and Yahoo act as destinations and sell ads, and that Yahoo would do well to receive traffic from Facebook.



As for the possibility that Facebook will go on the prowl, Michael Arrington discovered that Mark Zuckerberg recently updated his status update with the message "Spotify is so good." Spotify is a music service similar to iLike, which MySpace is buying, so a move here would help Facebook keep pace. Facebook and Spotify also happen to share an investor - Li Ka-shing.

Shopping Search Tactics for the Holiday Season

Although retailers are struggling this holiday season with the current economic issues, recent comScore data shows that shopping search engines are thriving and are performing better than last year.

“Cyber Monday saw significant visitor gains at most of the top retail resources, led by Shopzilla.com sites with nearly 2 million visitors (up 98 percent versus the November base period), followed by Yahoo! Shopping with 1.9 million visitors (up 81 percent) and Google Product Search with 1.1 million (up 59 percent).”

These numbers further prove that consumers are browsing around online comparing prices and searching for the best deal. In the above video Greg Hintz, the General Manager of Yahoo! Shopping, gives four tips retailers need to know as they optimize their campaign.

1. Optimize your data feed.
2. Make sure your data feed provides relevant, comprehensive, and fresh data.
3. Use factual language instead of “marketing” language.
4. Include all product specifics.

When you move on to Yahoo! Product Submit, Greg points out that the primary factor is relevancy. Other factors to look at are merchant rating since higher rating produces a higher ranking. Also, remember to take advantage of comparison-shopping sites.

More WebProNews Videos

Microsoft's Revenge

Microsoft's Revenge
Henry Blodget | November 15, 2008 9:27 AM

Microsoft has been kicked around the block in the Internet business for going on 15 years. Now it is potentially payback time.

While everyone else hunkers down and fights to survive, Microsoft gets to sit back and decide who to buy. When it decides, it can dig into a $20 billion cash pile that will nearly replenish itself this year with $15 billion of free cash flow. No one else, including Google, will gain this much of a relative advantage from the global economic collapse.

(Google, moreover, is now hamstrung by alert regulators--thanks, in part, to Microsoft's lobbying--and is focused on cutting costs and narrowing its ambitions. These should keep it distracted for the next couple of years.)

Who could Microsoft buy? Some obvious names, and many smaller not-so-obvious ones.

But the first thing Microsoft needs to do if it is to succeed long-term in the Internet business is build a central consumer brand that it can hang everything else off of. (Alternatively, it can focus on the back end, via search and other technologies, but this likely won't be as profitable. The vast majority of Google's immense profit comes from searches on its own site, not third-party sites, and the same will hold true for Microsoft).

The big consumer Internet brands other than Google include:

* Yahoo
* AOL
* Facebook
* MSN, et al (Microsoft needs to consolidate ALL its Internet brands into one. This one's probably the most prominent).

Microsoft could probably buy Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook today for $20 billion of cash. It could then consolidate them under a single brand and build a strong alternative for advertisers vis a vis Google. (Vastly easier said than done, but possible.)

If Microsoft isn't willing to put all its weight behind a single brand, it will probably fail regardless of what it buys. This has been Microsoft's Achilles heel for the past 15 years--an unwillingness to commit to one Internet brand and strategy--and we're not optimistic that it will be able to get out of its own way this time either.

We still think the smart play here would be for Microsoft to spin its Internet operations OUT of Microsoft and INTO Yahoo and then build everything around that brand as a separate public company. We think Steve Ballmer is congenitally predisposed against this approach, however, even though it would likely be a great move for Microsoft shareholders (who would own most of the new Yahoo AND the original Microsoft).

But, in any event, as the Valley goes into the fetal position, Microsoft's relative position is growing stronger. And we imagine this is not lost on the folks in Redmond.