Aaron Goldman is Chief Marketing Officer at Kenshoo, where he puts lessons learned from Google to good use in digital marketing consulting and matchmaking. This post is part of a blog tour celebrating the book launch.
When I first heard that Google was creating a social network called Google Me, my first thought was, “Crap, I hope they don’t sue me for using this photo on the jacket cover of my book.” My second thought was, “Well, that makes sense.” Google needs a social network. A big one. Buzz isn’t catching on. Wave failed. Orkut hasn’t scaled outside Brazil and India.
Meanwhile, Facebook has soared past 500 million active users. More importantly, people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. And, even more importantly, more than 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month. Google is worried. And it should be. The more time people spend on Facebook, the more likely they are to search via Bing, the default web search provider. And, the more content people share on Facebook, the more signals they give Facebook (and potentially, Bing) about the relevancy and credibility of web sites and other digital assets.
This information is immensely valuable. And it’s virtually impossible for Google to get without its own social network. Google was built on a search algorithm that crawled the web one link at a time. Along the way, it kept track of what websites linked to others and what topics they covered. This data was used to determine what websites showed up on Google search results and in what order. Facebook is building a search algorithm based on the social graph. Rather than following links, it’s following likes. By keeping track of what content people like, Facebook can show its own search results based on what your friends find relevant and credible. That’s pretty powerful stuff. And Google knows it.
In my book, Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google, I share 20 “Googley Lessons” from the world’s most ubiquitous brandto help marketers better engage their customers and prospects. One of those lessons is “Track Everything.” For Google, this means tracking every possible signal that can be used to better deliver search results. That includes likes. For marketers, this means tracking every possible signal that can be used to deliver a better product and improve your marketing and advertising. That includes likes.
So, if you haven’t already, start using Facebook Insights for Your Domain and make sure you have the Like button front and center on your website. Until Google has a big social network of its own, it won’t be able to take the next step in search relevance. But that doesn’t mean marketers have to wait.
Now, where I can get a “Like Me” t-shirt?
