Google's Real-Time Search Includes Facebook Fan Pages Now

February 25, 2010 by ·

Back in December Google announced their deal with Facebook to list feeds from Facebook in their real-time search results.   Although they reached a deal, the data wasn’t making it into the feeds until now.  Google tweeted that Facebook Fan Pages feed are not officially part of real-search results.

What you need to know:

The only updates that are being shown in real-time search results are updates (links, status updates, photos, videos etc) that are posted on a Facebook Fan Page by the owner of the page (comments by page visitors will not be included)

What does this mean?

If you don’t have a Fan Page, you need one now and you need to keep it updated and active.

A quote from Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand:

“This is also a good time for search marketers and marketers in general to think again about Facebook, if you haven’t already. More and more Facebook content has been made visible to search engines over the years.

“  Sullivan then goes on to say “ Google’s move makes having Facebook fan pages even more essential. Without one, you’re missing out on a chance to be found within yet another area, Google’s real time results

.”

(Source: )


Danny said it all – if you don’t have a page – now is the time!

Don’t forget in addition to the Notes, Links, Discussion and Wall (default tabs on a Facebook Fan page) you want to create custom tabs with FBML to make the page more compelling and a stronger marketing tool.  If you don’t know how to work with code, let me know and I’ll be happy to get you a quote on us creating the page.

Got a Fan Page already?  Send me the URL and I’ll take a peek and see if I have any suggestions to improve it.  :)

Have any questions or comments?  Submit them below!

Jenn Horowitz, Director of Marketing

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Yahoo! and Twitter Parnership

February 24, 2010 by ·

Twitter and Yahoo! announced a content sharing deal today!

In addition to real-time Twitter updates on Yahoo! Search, people will be able to access their Twitter feeds on Yahoo! verticals like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports and others.

Yahoo! is making it easy for people to tweet from Yahoo! sites and share content from Yahoo! in their tweets.

“Let me try to capture the enormity of this integration in 140 characters or less,” Yahoo! Vice President Bryan Lamkin said in a written release. “We’re turning the key to the online social universe — you will find the most personally relevant experiences through Yahoo!”

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Important Info on Twitter and Real Time Search

January 21, 2010 by ·

Everyone is trying to understand more about Real Time Search and how they can get their tweets ranked.  Here are a couple bits of useful information to help you better understand.

Statement from Bing: “If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower.”  Nothing surprising there but it’s good to be aware.

Straight from Google’s Amit Singhal (who has led development of real-time search at Google):

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

In other words, get followers that have lots of followers themselves!  “You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers,” his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely, Singhal says. But it is “definitely, definitely” more than a popularity contest he went on to say.

Hashtags a No-No??

Hashtags are really popular – and for good reason – they help your tweets get more exposure and help people organize topics.

However they can also as red flags to lower tweet quality and attract spam-like content, Singhal says.

Too bad – I see where Google is coming from but it’s really a useful strategy.  In my own testing I’ve seen my tweets with hashtags come up in the real time search results but I haven’t tested extensively enough yet to draw my own conclusions and we have the word right from Google, so for now at least, you may want to heed the warning!

Love to hear your thoughts and questions on this!  :)   Comments welcomed!

From soggy, wet and windy Southern California,

Jenn Horowitz, Director of Marketing

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Danny Sullivan Says It Best

December 13, 2009 by ·

Like most people in the search industry, I’ve been thinking a lot about real-time search and playing around with it.  I’ve been compiling some notes for a Blog post I wanted to write and then I came across a post Danny Sullivan wrote – and as always – his post was concise, informative and very interesting.  So I’m just going to share his post:

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Real-Time Search

December 10, 2009 by ·

We knew it was coming and now it’s here!

A few days ago Google launched real-time search

.

Real-time search is the catch phrase used to describe indexing what’s happening on the web, in real time. They will pull in Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, Blog posts, Google News Feeds, Yahoo! Answers and even MySpace feeds.

Back in October Google announced a partnership with Twitter and Bing announced a partnership with Twitter and Facebook.  Now Google has Facebook and MySpace as well.

Note that real-time search works on Android and iPhone as well.

Although it will take a few days to roll out this feature for everyone, you can see it now in a “Hot Topics” feature that’s been added to Google Trends (). Click on any trend, then click a “Hot Topic,” and you’ll see the new “Latest Results” area of Google search results.

Social media is a rich source of information, with opinions, insights, and even breaking news and the engines want to tap into this current information and deliver it to searchers.

What’s Does It Look Like?

Bing has had a section for tweets in the search engine results pages (SERPs) since late October. Yahoo began relying on tweets to point out hot news stories in its results last month.

In Google’s version of real-time search, there will be a section of its main results page that will include scrolls relevant information within a few seconds after it pops up in the web index.

Previously a new search query was the only way to see the blog posts, status updates and other information that Google had collected since the previous query.  Now the stream of tweets, Blog posts, videos, photos etc will stream through the results page.

Google’s real-time information will eventually include streams from Facebook and MySpace, but not until early next year, said Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search products and user experience.

Microsoft and Yahoo already have access to some Facebook updates.

“People expect search engines to make all kinds of information available to them,” said Amit Singhal, a Google engineer who oversaw the development of the real-time tool.

Other Google Updates: They provided a preview of a test product, called “Google Goggles,” that will enable people to send a photograph of an object and get search results about it.

What Does This Mean To You?

Social Media (Twitter and Facebook and I guess MySpace) are more important than ever and if you aren’t Blogging yet – you also need to be doing that.  Keeping up with the trends is the best way to keep your site competitive and coming up on top.

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