The social network and the media at large have been buzzing ever
since Mark Zuckerberg announced his latest fore into the world of search. His
new tool called Graph Search is putting a new spin on web searching. In the
world of 2.0 web analytics, this announcement is creating a schism within the
search engine network.
Search engines such as Google, Bing, Chrome, Yahoo, and Facebook
are all fighting for market dominance. Figures compiled by Experian revealed
that Google’s share of the search market sector dropped to its lowest level in
five years during 2012 (Loveridge, 2013). In comparison, the Microsoft Bing
search engine’s year-on-year market share increased by 1.15 per cent from 3.84
to 4.99 per cent (Loveridge, 2013).
Bing and Facebook’s Graph Search tools leverage algorithms that
help users socialize their search process. “Microsoft Bing could continue to
erode Google’s market share lead due to its widespread device availability and
the recent announcement that it was to partner with Facebook for its new
Facebook Graph Search tool.” (Loveridge, 2013) “While Bing optimization should
already be a basic component of most digital marketing plans, it often
overlooked. Clearly, being found in a Bing web search is important now and may
increase in importance as Graph Search is rolled-out to the masses.” (Wedu.com,
2013)
Mark Zuckerberg believes, “Graph Search and web search are very
different. Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: “hip
hop”) and provide the best possible results that match those keywords. With
Graph Search, you combine phrases (for example: “my friends in New York who
like Jay-Z“) to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that’s
been shared on Facebook. We believe they have very different uses.” (Wismer,
2013)
Graph Search puts the focus back on likes instead of metrics
based outcomes. “If Graph Search is successful, it will be more important that
your page is liked by the friends of a person searching for your product or
service.” (Wedu.com, 2013) This is a vast change from the clickstream analysis
Web Analysts currently leverage. Instead, of analyzing building block metrics
such as page visit, sessions, and bounce rate; social search is more concerned
with the tastes and whim of the social network, which is much harder to predict
and analyze because of their unpredictable nature. Digital marketing as a
practice will also have to adjust to accommodate the new social search
enterprise.
Because search is a key part of any company’s acquisition
portfolio, Avinash Kaushik author of Web Analytics 2.0, is a proponent of
pouring a lot of resources into optimizing websites to show up optimally in
search engines for relevant queries (Kaushik, 2010). This is all well and good,
but how will the schism between social search and web search affect a web
analyst’s ability to improve search results for websites? Will web search be
absorbed into social search, or will a web analyst have to navigate and improve
results across two diverse search engines? Only time will help reveal these
unanswered questions, but it seems that Web Analytics 2.0 is transitioning into
Web Analytics 3.0.
Retrieved
Wismer, David. (2013). Zuckerberg: ‘FB’s graph search is really
neat stuff, but will take years’ (and other quotes of the week). Retrieved
January 28, 2013 from
Kaushik,
A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of
customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing.
Loveridge, Samantha. (2013). Google search market share hits
five year low. Retrieved January 28, 2013 from
Retrieved January 28, 2013 from
http://blog.weduhosting.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/wedu-fb-graph-search-infographic.jpg
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