Social media until recently has been a non-tested market for the most part. We will probably look back in a few as 3-5 years and term this era as the “wild West” in Social Media Marketing (SEM). We are all working in uncharted waters where everything we read and hear about social media sites and their effectiveness changes week to week. The role most social media sites are taking as the web grows is a hold position for now in real time search and immediate access of information!
Recently a major hole has been seen in Google’s technology, social media sites like Digg, Reddit and Twitter have seemed to patch; real time search. The design of Google’s index isn’t designed for immediate delivery of information when news breaks. The following article was an eye opener, from SEOmoz about the course of action on the web on one of the largest stories of the year:
Google didn’t index this for a whole 3 hrs and 17 minutes; this being after it was widely available to the web through social media. The effect was so dramatic that Google actually considered it to be spam upon first analysis.
The problem currently for Google is; it basically operates with 2 types of content it needs to display.
1. The slow web
The slow web is what populates most of what we see in Google and filters in information somewhat slowly. Most cases it is estimated that this index is refreshed at a slower rate and new content is added or subtracted based on the basis of importance and originality usually as assessed by incoming links. Don’t expect this to fulfill the needs of real time search addicts and the “instant gratification” seekers.
2. The fast web
The fast web is more for things like blog search and is designed to handle much faster display of information and populates new information very rapidly. Look at your own search, try “Internet Marketing” and you can see how Google displays more recent information placed in its index.
Notice links coming up here from sites anywhere from 24 minutes to 1 day ago when selecting “recent results” in the search engine. Note that this is significantly different than the “regular results” for the term “Internet Marketing”.
So what does this mean for you and why do I now care about social media?
What this incident shows is that sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Reddit are not going anywhere but rather search engines will have to find methods to either replicate this type of service OR cater to them. In situations like this how will Google model this information and become the landing page for all things search. Will Twitter content be in Google? Will Digg stories populate Google News? Will Google crawl sites like Digg to find the hot content and then list that?
If controlling the Web for your brand or niche is important then you need stay ahead of the curve with things like social media. If you are the first in sites like Twitter for your niche you already have an advantage. You want to succeed in Twitter or sites like it you need to be in there and conversing with others. Build your network and others will follow you.
Google will no doubt evolve and evolve quickly, maybe it’ their Wave product, we’ll see! These “recent results” can handle suffice for the time being, however, a modification in usability needs to be considered to highlight “the fast web” results if Google wants to compete with sites like Twitter to provide this “instant gratification” need.
Google is not flawed as, Google is safe by design. Twitter is somewhat reckless with information that is not screened. If Google is using sites like this to find information you, as an Internet Marketer need to be there. Just like Digg I can imagine that Google will use Twitter popular terms to find directions to populate their results.
We live, we learn, we evolve. Stay ahead of the curve. Immediate Gratification will rule!
Tags: Adwords, Google, Google site map, keyword research, SEO, SEO tips, SEO training, Social Media Marekting, Tips, Yahoo Search Marketing
