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FACEBOOK SEARCH
HOW CONTENT AND THE VALUE OF
THE ‘LIKE’ WILL AFFECT RESULTS
IN GRAPH SEARCH
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Facebook Graph Search is the search engine inside Facebook.
You can use it to find photos, restaurants, places, and new and
old friends. It works by joining up all the different data points
you and all your friends have entered into Facebook and returning relevant results based on how they are all connected. For
example, you can search for ‘restaurants in Atlanta my friends
like’. The algorithm uses all your friends’ check-ins and ‘likes’
related to restaurants in Atlanta to give you a list of restaurants
that, if you can trust your friends, you’ll like too.
This work explores the notion that SEO for Graph Search will
be a battleground for companies and brands vying for the top
spot in search results just like in Google.
However, there will be a difference in how Facebook determines which company, brand, or piece of content ranks better
than others. I propose that each individual and brand on Facebook will have an authority score, similar to Klout®. This ultimately will mean that the value of each person’s like, or opinion,
will vary.
Brands, companies, and individuals will then be judged based
on the quality of their fan base, and by extension, the quality
of the friends of each of their fans. How qualified a fan is will
reflect how relevant the fan’s interests, personal details, such
as education and place of work, and Facebook connections are
to the brand.
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facebook Graph Search:
What is it and where’s
it headed?
By Adam Westin, Associate Director, Head of Search, Edelman UK
Follow on Twitter: @adwestin Add on Google+ Find on Linkedin
Find restaurants, music,
Facebook Graph Search
(GS) rolled out to all Engphotos, activities, and meet
lish speakers in the US in
August 2013. It uses the
new friends all through
details of your profile
people you already know.
and the details of all your
The search engine in friends’ profiles to make
finding photos, places,
Facebook, called Graph
and things easier within
Search, makes this possible Facebook. Facebook has
an ever-growing wealth of
personal content. Its motivation to make
it sortable and findable is intuitive. Improving the user experience on Facebook
means people will spend more time. If at
the same time, Facebook can start taking
market share from traditional search engines and review sites, it’ll reap the benefits of the ad revenue that comes with it.
The social giant is smartly taking a conservative approach to global rollout
as it understandably has not only a
number of kinks to work out, but also
needs to spend time defining what
Graph Search will ultimately become.
For now, Graph Search {Engine} Results Pages (GSERPs) show unsurprising results: the content for which you
have searched. The interesting part is
thinking about what GS will become,
particularly within the domain of content in GSERPs. For brands and marketers, it will be about what the actions are
that are needed to rank well in GS in
order to increase visibility of their content and deepen brand engagement.
For Facebook, it’s about providing a
useful utility with which paid advertising can seamlessly integrate. Facebook
has shareholders and stock price to
worry about, so it will be no surprise
when monetization emerges within GS.
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Content Currently Present
in Facebook Graph Search
Graph Search results
for movie searches
are fairly basic; a
literal list of movie
titles ranked based
your friends’ ‘likes’.
At the present time, the content for
brands/companies shown in GSERPs is
pretty narrow in focus and feels a bit
like Yelp®, which is an urban reviews
site with recommendations by locals
for restaurants, shopping, and activities. The current search results are fairly
ridged in that customised content from
brands, or anyone for that matter, isn’t
included. For example, you can search
for ‘movies my friends like’ and the results are just a list of FB pages for each
of those movies. There’s not yet any video trailer content, no IMDb write-up, or
anything else beyond just movie pages.
But again, Facebook is focusing on utility and relevance of the results first and
foremost, so it’s naturally taking its time.
Recommendations from people you
trust, a.k.a. your friends
Speaking of utility, one of the most
common use cases is searching for
restaurants your friends have been to
(checked in), or recommended (liked
the company FB page). The same concept applies to dentists, vets, and most
any other business category. You can
search for positive things like “restaurants in London my friends like”, which
will return restaurants in Atlanta that
your friends like. No surprise there.
However, GS won’t give a result for
negative searches, such as “restaurants
in Atlanta my friends hate.” Instead,
you’re given a Bing search result complete with related search suggestions
and paid search ads. Facebook may
choose to entertain including results
in GS for negative queries, especially
where relevant to reviews and recommendations for restaurants, stores,
bars, etc., but for the moment, just as
it doesn’t have a “Don’t Like” button,
it’s opting to stay positive and happy.
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In any case, GS is still in its infancy. The seen, but rest assured it will happen. With
output is limited to a certain set of query that will come the inevitable clamor among
parameters and by the details of your con- brands to rank at the top of the results for
nections. This won’t always be the case, given searches. The route to the top is easy
though. With an eye on revenue generation, in concept: unique, relevant content. The
Facebook will find a way to start integrating winners will be those brands that figure out
other content within the GSERPs. The trick what their audience wants, and gives it to
will be to be able to do so while still putting them.
the user experience first. Relevance for the
user is going to be the single most imporLet’s establish a key parameter first,
tant factor in making GS a success, which though. Facebook isn’t trying to replicate
will be judged by user adoption. To this end, Google, at least not
Facebook is being smart with how it’s feel- yet. Google indexes In the short term, Graph Search
ing out what GS will ultimately become. The the entire web,
is a threat to review sites. In
current utility focuses on usability and func- while Facebook
tionality. It provides something that users utilizes data people the future, it will be a threat
can get from nowhere else. From a reviews have entered and
to search engines for market
and recommendations perspective, this the relationships
means advice from people users know and therein. Facebook share of long-tail searches
trust. From a data management perspec- doesn’t need to
tive, it’s a way to conveniently sort all the provide the answers to all things, just
content, primarily photos, based on your answers to some of the things people
connections, locations, etc. For Facebook, care most about. The result is an immethe key will be figuring out how to expand diate threat to sites like Yelp® and Open
the scope of content that is served up in Table® for reviews and recommendations.
the search results, while still maintaining Looking forward, it this will also be a threat
relevance.
to search engines for market share of
long-tail searches, which are searches
Exactly how Facebook will start blend- that contain multiple keywords. Consider
ing in content from brands remains to be the following example in the figure below:
Current WAY OF SEARCHING:
STEP
STEP
STEP
STEP
STEP
®
®
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FUTURE WAY OF SEARCHING:
STEP
Think about how impactful it would be
if Facebook could give relevant, real-time
answers to this type of question. Google
would lose those types of searches overnight. Facebook GS can’t give the full result
just yet for the above query, but it will in the
future. The implications this has for all brick
and mortar locations are huge. Companies
will need to ensure they provide Facebook
with all the information that customers
would factor into a purchase decision. From
our Italian example above, this would include
seating capacity, real-time reservation availability, operating hours, restaurant genre,
and location.
From a tactical perspective, this would mean
that just like fully filling out Google+ and Bing
Local profiles, owners will need to ensure
technical site markup like Open Graph tags
and schema.org are included in their site
coding. These act as behind-the-scenes
signposts to search engines and Facebook
to help them recognise things like an address
in the contact us section of a website. This
helps take out some of the guesswork on the
part of the engines by telling them explicitly
how to treat the information contained in
address tags, or phone number tags, etc.,
and display it properly to consumers. For
Facebook to get to the point where it can
confidently answer Bob’s Italian restaurant
query, the social giant is going to need a lot
of help from brands in the site markup arena,
but what this does is present an opportunity
for those brands and companies that are
quick to act, as they will be the ones to reap
the rankings rewards.
Content creation for Graph
search in the future
Local profile info is a no-brainer, but what
about content creation going forward?
Content strategies are obviously unique
to each business or brand. If done correctly, they are based on audience and
search behavior insight and should resonate with the target market in such a way
that the actions produced align with the
brand’s business objectives. That’s a longwinded way of saying connect with the
right customers, in the right way, so that
they benefit and so does the brand.
This concept is not novel. People want
content they find useful, be it informative or entertaining. The key question is
how will Facebook decide what content
is most relevant? Beyond keyword and
technical context it can infer from a piece
of content, Facebook will look at several
main factors for ranking search results, as
explained in the sections to follow.
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Personal Profiles Will Expand
to Include More Granular Data
It’s no secret that people share an incredible amount of personal
information on Facebook and other social networks already. We
all know far too much about people’s coffee drinks, their babies
eating schedules, and status updates that start out like this: “To
the guy in front of me in line at the checkout…” The point is, we
should expect the level of granularity in personTo build authority on al profiles to expand. Not only will you be able
to fill in that you live in a certain city, work at a
Facebook, a dog food brand
certain company, and you have 3 siblings, (and
should seek to acquire not here are links to their profiles), but you’ll also be
able to fill in the fact that you drive a black BMW
just any fan, but fans who
or have a golden retriever for a pet. Think about
are actual dog owners what this means in terms of targeting for a Mercedes dealership or a company that makes dog
food. They literally will know who their audience is. This is relevant
as a ranking factor because it will allow Facebook to dissect and
analyze who is engaging with a certain piece of content. Using the
dog food brand example, what this means is that 100 likes from
dog owners on a dog video will mean more to the brand in terms of
building authority than 100 likes on the same video by cat owners.
Facebook profile
fields will get more
granular. Expect
to be able to fill in
things like make/
model of your
car and the breed
of dog you own.
The result is a
marketer’s dream.
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Each Person’s Like Will Be
Valued Differently
Right now, all our ‘likes’ are counted equally. A teenager’s like on
a brand’s fan page carries the exact same weight as the CEO of a
billion dollar company in terms of determining the popularity and
value of the brand on Facebook. However, for the brand, raw fan
count paints a skewed picture of its audience because depending on the brand and its target audience, it may actually value the
teenager’s ‘like’ over the CEO’s, or vice versa. In the future within
Facebook, this will likely change. Facebook will use your connections, data, and information from other social profiles (which we
will willingly provide because that’s just what we do) to create a
Klout®-type evaluation of each person’s profile. Each person’s ‘like’,
or comment, will carry a different weight. However, it will be more
robust than Klout® because it will be able to understand not only
that you have authority, but that you have it in certain areas and not
others. Effectively, your opinion (your ‘like’), will vary in importance
depending on your relationship with the content with which you are
engaging and the people in your social profile. In turn, each of us,
and brands, will be judged by the quality of the company we keep.
To that end, content will be judged based Brands will be judged based on
on the authority of the producer of the conquality of their fan profiles and
tent, be it brand or an individual author. It
will be valued using a number of factors, but the extent to which the fans
primarily on follower profile. Brands with a
engagement with their content.
higher number of qualified fans will have a
higher authority than competitors, all else What defines a qualified fan will
being equal. What defines a qualified fan
be different for every single brand!
will be different for every single brand! So, if
two brands have the exact same followers, the brand for which the
follower profile is more relevant would be given a higher authority
score in Facebook’s eyes. What this means is that the value a person’s
‘like’ contributes to the fan profile for company A is different than
the value that same person’s ‘like’ gives to company B’s fan profile.
Consider the following example of how the power of each person’s ‘like’ will vary: John is an avid coin collector. He lists ‘coin
collection’ and ‘rare coins’ under his interests in his profile. He
works at Rare Coins, Inc., also in his profile. Many of his friends
on FB also are interested in coin collection. To Facebook, John
is seen as having a certain level of authority about coins. Therefore, when John ‘likes’ the fan page of Coin Collectors Monthly,
his ‘like’ contributes more ranking authority to the page than an
average like. By the same token though, if John were to like a fan
page for a helicopter manufacturer, being that he’s not an expert
in helicopters, his ranking authority contribution to that page
would not be as significant.
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What Does This
Mean For Brands?
What this means for brands is that similar to how Google judges part of a website’s authority by looking at the value of links
pointing to that site from others (quality over quantity), Facebook will start looking at the quality of fans a brand has and how
engaged they are with the Page’s content. Note that amplifying
content with paid media will continue to play a pivotal role in
consistently reaching the right fans with the right message to
keep them engaged. That said, factors by which fan profiles will
be judged will include, among other things:
How influential/authoritative they are (e.g. celebrity
status) with respect to the target audience
Interests, hobbies, etc. which are relevant to the
brand brand
Who their social connections are and what relevant
interests their friends have
Where they live and work and where they went
to school
For brands seeking to build their authority on Facebook and
rank well in Graph Search, targeted influencer outreach activities will increase. This will be so much more than just traditional influencer identification because we’re no longer just dealing
with trying to acquire a single person. Instead, brands must
consider the implications of the social connections of that influencer. The social profile of each person will serve as validation for that person’s influence and authority and will be the
measure of whether that person is truly relevant to the brand.
Conveniently, this is also how Facebook will keep people from
trying to game the system by buying ‘likes’ because you can’t
easily fake a legitimate social profile.
In summary, doing well in Graph Search will require brands to
focus not only on creating quality, relevant content, but also
to commit to acquiring the right type of fan. The two concepts
go hand in hand, as qualified fans will be attracted to strong
content. The best course of action is to forget about trying to
rank well and instead just focus on providing customers with
what they want. High rankings will be a natural byproduct.
By Adam Westin, Associate Director, Head of Search, Edelman UK
By Adam Westin, Associate Director, Head of Search, Edelman UK
Follow on Twitter: @adwestin Add on Google+ Find on Linkedin
Follow on Twitter: @adwestin Add on Google+
Find on Linkedin
Adam leads Edelman’s search practice in Europe, focusing on
driving real results with ROI-driven strategic thinking and
insights-led content creation.
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