Bing To Index Facebook

Bing has made an announcement that might prove to be a big hit, I mean a very big hit for those of us now are using Facebook as a Social Media Marketing tool and at the same time huge blow to Google’s dominance. Starting now, yes now, Bing is incorporating Facebook data into its search results. Been there and did some searches and yes it is up and running on the Bing search engine! So now if you search for something on Bing and you have activated Facebook results, you will see the pages, products and websites your friends (even their faces show up) like and recommend way up in results, no matter if that website normally ranks first second or heaven forbid, the last page on a search.

Perhaps even more interesting is that these results will appear totally independent of any traditional and what we thought of as normal SEO practices. If your friends like it, it will appear on the first page. Magic?


More than ever for companies engaged in Social Media Marketing “It's Not What you Know, but Who you Know”. Content is important but it is who you are rubbing elbows with that will be making a major difference.


The more your business is visible on Facebook, the better chance of your website being Liked and your content, products and services being pushed higher up on this new social search results.


If your business has not been active in Social Media Marketing you better get it going. (A pause for a commercial message: At Larson’s we know what we are doing and we can get you going on a Social Media Marketing campaign, quickly, easily and completely)


Yet, content is still King, long live the King. The only way a page will be Liked by the masses on Facebook is if it contains great content. So don’t think you can park your content on the side and get all your friends to like you and you will be projected up onto the heaven of web search pages, the first page. It is still going to take work, lots of work. Varied content, blog posts, videos, images and audio, not to mention content that is optimized. And not to add more challenges but this does not kill off traditional SEO. Pages will still need to be "found" in order to be Liked from this new Bing button. Total strangers to your business can still influence search results, so SEO still matters.


It's easy to see that Bing is relying, or are they hoping and praying on using Facebook for social search. You might think that, because it's focused only on Facebook, this news is not totally earth shaking, as Facebook goes past three-quarters of a billion users across the world, but, it is. At least to Bing. Consider now that Facebook users 750,000000,000 (looks more impressive when you type out all the zeros) of them now have a reason to use Bing rather than Google.


Another interesting thought is that Facebook could technically block Google from indexing any or all of its content. This would and could kill Google’s need to heavy Facebook users.


In the words of Bing:
"At Bing, our mission is to help you make faster, more informed decisions. We designed a new way to experience search, focusing on great design, task completion, instant answers, and vertical categories like shopping and travel to help you make decisions faster. While we’ve made great strides in these areas, there is a huge opportunity for improvement. Today, search remains largely driven by facts and links – we think it’s time to change that.


Research tells us that 90% of people seek advice from family and friends as part of the decision making process. This “Friend Effect” is apparent in most of our decisions and often outweighs other facts because people feel more confident, smarter and safer with the wisdom of their trusted circle. A movie critic may pan the latest summer block buster, but your friends say it’s the feel good movie of the year, so you ignore the critic and go (and wholeheartedly agree). Historically, search hasn’t incorporated this “Friend Effect” – and 80% of people will delay making a decision until they can get a friend’s stamp of approval. This decision delay, or period of time it takes to hunt down a friend for advice, can last anywhere from a few minutes to days, whether you’re waiting for a call back, text, email or tweet.


Today, Bing is bringing the collective IQ of the Web together with the opinions of the people you trust most, to bring the “Friend Effect” to search. Starting today, you can receive personalized search results based on the opinions of your friends by simply signing into Facebook. New features make it easier to see what your Facebook friends “like” across the Web, incorporate the collective know-how of the Web into your search results, and begin adding a more conversational aspect to your searches. Decisions can now be made with more than facts, now the opinions of your trusted friends and the collective wisdom of the Web.


You can quickly see what your friends like and are sharing. Find and connect with the right friends faster. Pick the brains of friends of who live where you’re traveling and share shopping lists with your own team of retail gurus. And, return the favor to your friends by liking more things on the Web. With one click you can let your network know that you like a brand, an article, a celebrity or even a place. Because we know the best decisions are not just fueled by facts, they require the opinions and recommendations of your friends."


If you are a heavy social or local Social Networking person Google search results, while complete are now less relevant as my person search needs become more social and localized. How many online socialites are there? Now you can start to understand why Google has been frantically trying to enter the social space with Google +1. Maybe, for once it's too little, too late for Google.


Larson Notes & Satire: Ill just let the above words set in and let you think on it for a while. If you are not hammering away at Social Media Marketing like we have (active since 2006) you better. I’ve been saying it over and over. Get involved in Social Media Marketing for your business, and then Google started doing “Real Time Search”. At that time the Larson web site http://www.larsonassociates.ws/ saw a 1000% weekly hit increase, yes you heard me 1000%. Now with this new Bing deal? http://www.larsonassociates.ws/SocialMediaMarketing we are ready to serve ourselves and you. Will we see another 1000% increase? That would be nice.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
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P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.