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Facebook Surpasses Google… But Really?

By EricWerner | February 17, 2010

There has been a significant amount of activity around this article citing compete.com’s research suggesting that Facebook has surpassed Google in terms of their very scientific “Directs more users to online hubs like Yahoo and MSN” metric.

Really?

Facebook Surpasses Google... But Really?

The way that info was framed in these articles seems pretty fishy, “top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN” seems mis-representative because it is stated without any reference to what the other sources are or what percentage of the traffic to these portals this represents. (my guess is that Google search has historically driven little traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN on purpose) It’s great headline fodder though, and that’s what drives pageviews.

Perspective

Of course, if you know your current web history then you know that Microsoft owns a percentage of Facebook in a deal that gave “Microsoft control over the placement of banner ads on Facebook outside the U.S., where about 60% of Facebook’s 49 million active users reside. Microsoft had already reached agreements to sell U.S. banner ads for Facebook through 2011” So no big surprise that Facebook is sending traffic to MSN.

To be clear, I don’t mean to be a Google fanboy. My main grievance is with a bs metric that is driving all kinds of attention. “Google, which has profited handsomely from directing Web surfers to their destinations during the past decade, was third with 7 percent, just behind e-commerce site eBay, which had 7.61 percent. MySpace was fourth with just under 2 percent.” Is pretty useless without demonstrating the existence or lack of a trend, segments, or comparison.

This is coming from Compete’s director of online media and search – Compete, a “Web measurement firm”. S0 someone who is versed in web measurement knows a meaningless comparison. Alternate headline (per graph below) “Everything Interesting Happened Last Year”.

Facebook Approaching Google… Last Year

Facebook Surpasses Google... But Really?

Better question: How is Compete doing?

Facebook Surpasses Google... But Really?

In fairness I think the way that Buzz was rolled out is probably a good sign that Google is recognizing FB as a competitor. (It integrates with Twitter and Flickr… but not FB) Facebook’s privacy settings prevent Google from collecting information the way it does on Twitter, Flickr, Reader, and other sites. This is tremendously important distinction

There Were Also Some Great Points

“People are spending less time navigating the Internet on their own and are now navigating the Internet based on their friends’ recommendations or their friends’ activities,” said Dave Yovanno, chief executive of Gigya Inc., a Palo Alto firm that offers social-media services. “That’s one of the big trends we started picking up on probably four or five months ago.”

That might be part of the reason that Google is now ranking real time search results and showing results from your social circle in the SERPs – whether that will have any positive impact on the user experience or not is another question, but it definitely demonstrates that Google has some concerns in that area.

@dberkowitz probably makes the best point when he states the following ”But there’s always been one downside to search,” he said. “Consumers only spend about 5 percent of their time online searching and the other 95 percent of the time at the destination. Social media is quickly accounting for a large percentage of that 95 percent. Google’s biggest acquisitions, DoubleClick and YouTube, have been all about playing a big role in the rest of consumers’ Web usage.”

An Endorsement for Gigya?

So I hope I’m fair and balanced and I’m not saying that this article didn’t make some good points, but it read a little bit like a “better than paid” endorsement for Gigya, “a Palo Alto firm that offers social-media services” hopefully this will get some search traffic otherwise I might “have to consider what companies like Gigya offer – social-media optimization.” This is certainly timed right for Gigya though, and we can follow their lead by launching webinars to coincide with mentions in conventional news and leveraging the audiences of prominent thought leaders like Jeremiah Owyang

Facebook Surpasses Google... But Really?


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Topics: Non-SEO BS | 12 Comments »

Posted on 17 February 2010 by Eric Werner

has written 1 articles for SEO Bullshit

  • http://purposeinc.com/ purposeinc

    Eric, you wrote a good article here.

    There is no disputing the fact that a ton of folks are looking at facebook now, and being driven in different directions as a result.

    Are more people making purchasing decisions based on facebook rather than google, I doubt it. People on facebook are there to hang out and learn, where people on google are ready to buy. Obviously a generalization, but there is a lot of truth to this.

    I am always suspicious, with good reason, of articles like the one you are quoting, where they come to a grand conclusion without showing the source data.

  • http://smackdown.blogblogsblogs.com/ Michael VanDeMar

    my guess is that Google search has historically driven little traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN on purpose

    Just so you know, more people search for Yahoo on Google than they do for [sex] or [porn]:

    http://www.google.com/trends?q=yahoo%2C+sex%2C+…

  • EricWerner

    Thanks Dave – I was hoping that you would like this.

    What bothers me is that Facebook is doing phenomenal, and I know that you've had incredible results advertising on Facebook for a variety of clients as have I – social media is tremendously useful – why do people feel the need to overhype?

  • EricWerner

    Good point, I could have added a qualifier to that. I certainly don't mean to suggest that Google is not sending a lot of traffic to Yahoo or MSN. My meaning was that Google does not have the intent or the motive to give them traffic.

    It doesn't benefit Google substantially to give traffic to Yahoo or MSN whereas it does benefit Facebook. You don't see Yahoo or MSN pages in search results as often (for relevant non-Yahoo/MSN brand searches) – At least not as often as you would for any other uber-authority website that had content relevant to the query – part of the reason is surely because they compete with Google.

  • http://www.seopros.org Terry Van Horne

    One thing I really can say makes me sick is SEO's or Social fcktards talking their book and using stupid misleading facts to sell it. Who cares the amount of time on the site. Last christmas Google acounted for 70% of sales facebook was not much more effective than Squidoo. No one knows if friends are recommending products so it's just more Social Media Expert BS. With stats only a journalist looking for a headline publishes.

  • EricWerner

    I agree with you Terry. The sad thing about it is that social media is probably going down the same path that SEO has already trod. Creating a Market For Lemons…

    http://www.johnon.com/293/seo-consulting-2.html

    Social Media is incredibly useful, profitable, and effective for some industries. Unfortunately Social Media has fairly little barrier to entry because there is almost no overhead to start and the people who need the services are so far out of the loop that anyone who has a Twitter account seems to be an expert.

    Social Media “fake expert” is not seasoned, doesn't have a sufficient level of accountability, sells the client huge expectations, sells the wrong services to the wrong industries, sells what worked before in a different landscape hoping that it might work.

    Clients get burned. The industry begins to have a smelly reputation. The high quality firms start to seem too expensive especially since there is risk of utter failure and the “fake expert” can supposedly do it for half the cost.

    The person accountable for profit/loss senses a higher risk profile if he goes with the low cost social media “expert” who can do it profitably for bupkis (it's easy to do it profitably when you have no accountability) And the cycle continues…

  • EricWerner

    I agree with you Terry. The sad thing about it is that social media is probably going down the same path that SEO has already trod. Creating a Market For Lemons…

    http://www.johnon.com/293/seo-consulting-2.html

    Social Media is incredibly useful, profitable, and effective for some industries. Unfortunately Social Media has fairly little barrier to entry because there is almost no overhead to start and the people who need the services are so far out of the loop that anyone who has a Twitter account seems to be an expert.

    Social Media “fake expert” is not seasoned, doesn't have a sufficient level of accountability, sells the client huge expectations, sells the wrong services to the wrong industries, sells what worked before in a different landscape hoping that it might work.

    Clients get burned. The industry begins to have a smelly reputation. The high quality firms start to seem too expensive especially since there is risk of utter failure and the “fake expert” can supposedly do it for half the cost.

    The person accountable for profit/loss senses a higher risk profile if he goes with the low cost social media “expert” who can do it profitably for bupkis (it's easy to do it profitably when you have no accountability) And the cycle continues…

  • zeeshaan

    hey.. i have a question about facebook and google search engine optimizations… could you please look into it here – http://www.zeeis.me/blog/search-fb-google-resul… …(not a spam .. im desperately seeking an answer..)

  • EricWerner

    Zeeshan, there are a lot of ranking other than the ones you can easily see (keywords on the page, keywords in the title) such as anchor text from inbound links. Have you checked to see if anyone links to Facebook using FB as the anchor text?

  • http://www.search-marketing-answers.com/blog alanbleiweiss

    zeeshaan

    First, I'd suggest you clean up your blog commenting system – don't let anyone comment who hasn't first previously had a comment approved. Most of the comments in the article you reference are link-spam auto-bots. The easiest way to tell if one is legit is “does this comment have anything to do with this article or is it just a generic comment that sounds like someone trying to make me feel good, but have nothing to do with the article”.

    Like the comment from joen baldwin, or “loans”. Those comments harm your own blog's trustworthiness and too many of those will get you slapped from Google.

    Anyhow in addition to the inbound link anchor text in EricWerner's suggestion, it could very well be that Google has manually worked in the “fb” logic to the SERPs, or a combination of those two. While they don't manually manipulate every site's ranking this way, given Facebook's size, it wouldn't surprise me if they did.

  • zeeshaan

    im new to bloggin ..soo thx bro !! :D

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    The high quality firms start to seem too expensive especially since there is risk of utter failure and the “fake expert” can supposedly do it for half the cost.