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Is Facebook A Threat To Google?

Facebook has confirmed that "all Open Graph-enabled Web pages will show up in search when a user likes them," reports AllFacebook.com.

Earlier this week, the blog wrote about the new Facebook SEO and its potential connection to Open Graph. "Now it's clear that this is the beginning of Facebook's Internet search strategy," it writes. "The race is now on for publishers to optimize their sites for Facebook's search engine."

While most sites are not being indexed by Facebook, All Facebook is guessing that publishers will soon be scrambling to optimize their sites.

Some analysts say Facebook is fast replacing Google as the gateway to the Web as consumers increasingly favor social connections and "liking" over blind search queries.

"To make matters worse for Google, Facebook uses Microsoft's Bing Search to place Web results at the bottom of the Facebook search results," notes Fortune. "Facebook 'likes' could become the new PageRank if Facebook search becomes more popular ... That could also mean an army of offshore faux Facebook users liking Viagra pages."

"Is there a better way?" Beyond Search asks of Google's method for indexing the Web. "Yep. Let people point out what pages they like and use these as a seed list. Then take a peek at what behaviors users evidence. Toss in some relationship analysis. Shake well. Serve to members. This is the recipe that Facebook hopes will put a needle in the steadily inflating Google search usage."

On the contrary, "I just don't see how Facebook and Bing are going to be a formidable opponent to Google," writes Marketing Pilgrim's Frank Reed. "The trouble lies in the fact that anything that is based on end users opinions is ripe for abuse and manipulation ... In order for search to be truly helpful in a broad stroke manner I believe that there needs to be as much objectivity in the results set as possible."

Either way, "This has become a full-scale attack on Google on all fronts at this point as Facebook has officially entered the internet search market," All Facebook concludes.

Adds Fortune: "Facebook does have some mind-bendingly huge numbers of users and growth," yet "It remains to be seen how much better this feature becomes."

Read the whole story at All Facebook et al. »

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