What Does the Recent Bing and Google Social Search Change Mean for Businesses?

May 20, 2011 - 8 minutes read - Best Internet Marketing Company, Blog, Blogging, Contemporary Online Business Marketing, In the News..., Mod Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Just a few days ago Bing announced how it would begin to fully integrate Facebook data into Bing’s search results. Of course Google didn’t want to be left out, so just a day later they announced how they will integrate their social search worldwide. Basically Facebook is in a pretty sweet position right now.. with over 600 million active users and that number growing everyday, the major search engines are realizing they need to strike deals with the social media giant in order to compete for traffic. This Bing-Facebook deal happens just a week after the Google smear campaign by Facebook. Although Google and Facebook have a rocky relationship to say the least, Google isn’t stupid. They realize the ridiculous power of Facebook and how they might actually lose some avid “Google-rs” to Bing if they don’t hop on the Facebook train soon.

Google rolled out their +1 feature not long ago, which is their version of the Facebook “like” button. Although this +1 feature is theoretically a great idea, it can’t even come close to competing with the Facebook “like” button – which is why you see Google immediately counter-moving on the Bing/Facebook announcement. My guess – The Google +1 feature will be extinct before people even realize what it is!

So how exactly is Bing incorporating Facebook into it’s search results?

Even though I’m a Mac girl and proud of it, PcWorld.com always has very informative articles (especially when the news is about Microsoft!) The following is taken from the recent article, Bing, Facebook Deepen Ties, Threaten Google +1, from PcWorld.com

Shared Shopping Lists

When you’re shopping on Bing — say, for a Microsoft Kin phone — you can add items to a shopping list to keep track of your browsing history. Now you can share those lists with other Facebook friends with the click of a button.

“Liked” Search Results — with Faces!

The first rollout of Bing and Facebook included “liked” pages of Facebook friends — now you can see the faces of up to three “likers,” just in case you forgot.

Crowdsourced Popularity

Not only will Bing reveal the pages your friends like, you can also see what other Facebook users are digging lately. Bing shows descriptions of pages other people like — without revealing their Facebook identities — to gauge not only what sources are validated by the herd, but also individual pages within those domains. For instance, you’ll see that many people “like” Epicurious and can also see its most popular recipes.

Deeper Facebook Profile Search with Locations

Bing makes Facebook stalking easier with enhanced profile search results, including picture, location, education, and employment details. Perhaps even creepier, you can now see where your Facebook friends are living. So, for instance, if you’re headed to Boston and do a quick Bing search, the results will show you which of your buddies reside there.

Flight Deals

It’s hard to keep track of all the deal-of-the-day services on the Web, and it’s even more taxing if you only want to go to one specific location. Now you can “like” the results of Bing’s already-comprehensive travel search function, and have updates on new deals sent directly to your Facebook feed.

So back to my question in the title of this post – What does this recent social search announcement mean for businesses? Well, with social search becoming part of the SERP’s your site, articles, videos, press releases, blog posts, etc., will need to be shared to gain serious traction within the SERP’s. Basically YOU NEED TO BE UTILIZING SOCIAL MEDIA! Period. There really isn’t a choice in the matter if you want your online marketing campaigns to be successful!

Sorry old-school SEO’ers – move over because social media is taking over the search engines! There should be new term for SEO that incorporates social media… hmmm something to think about? 😉 Seriously though, SEO campaigns without social media are going to become very ineffective in the near future, if they haven’t already. We don’t even start any SEO campaigns without social media and this article proves to be exactly why!

So how do you get people to share your content? First of all you need to actually generate content on a consistent basis! How? By blogging, creating and submitting articles, creating and submitting videos, press releases, anything really! Content is content so just create some! However, you need to actually provide value and become an authority leader in your industry – this is the only way people will actually share your content. If you are in a local market that isn’t really super competitive, just having content alone and submitting it to social media sites may be just enough to boost your search engine rankings, placing you at the top. Local businesses definitely won’t need as many “likes” and “re-tweets” as say a global footwear company who relies on customer reviews and social media buzz.

What is the point of this article? Businesses, large and small, need to be incorporating social media into their online marketing efforts, and that is that! Luckily Mod Girl has done this from day 1 for our clients so really nothing changes for us –  it only becomes easier for us to explain the power of social media when news like the Facebook/Bing deal breaks.

This news actually has encouraged me to start blogging more consistently for ModGirlMarketing.com. Our site is not a very good example of what I’m telling you to do! Ha, we spend more time promoting our client’s sites than we do our own! However, we see the power in consistent content creation especially when it provides value to your readers – because of this our goal is to start blogging more consistently and of course sharing our content with the world! 🙂 Now we just have to make time!

So hop on the social media bandwagon now business owners, you’ll be glad you did! 🙂

Oh, and while you’re at it, you can go ahead and “like” this post if you wish!

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