The Bing-Facebook Deal: What It Means for Lawyers
Bing recently announced that it has integrated Facebook “likes” into its results, which is a major victory over its arch nemesis, Google. But what does this really mean for lawyers and marketers? Read on to find out.
Search and social are merging
The idea that social and search are merging is not new. It’s been a subject of discussion for a long time, but its actual manifestation has been somewhat of a question mark – e.g., will people simply start using social search (like search.twitter.com) instead of Google? Will search engines directly serve up social results (like a chunk of real-time Twitter results in Bing)? Will search engines incorporate social popularity into their behind-the-scenes algorithms (like rewarding websites often cited in Twitter)? Or will Google/Bing displace the Twitters and Facebooks of the world by creating their own social features?
We began to see the amalgamation of search and social take shape last year when both Google and Bing began to incorporate Twitter and Facebook real-time social results into their pages. And we’ve also seen some less-than-spectacular attempts by Google to supplant other social media sites (Google profiles, Google Buzz, Google wiki, etc.)
Bing takes it to the next level
Bing’s integration of Facebook is the next step in the merger of search and social, although some are even claiming it’s a major shift in the balance of power from search to social. Rather than just pumping Tweets into its results pages for a touch of real-time data, Bing is now using your friends’ Facebook “likes” to produce recommendations for certain search queries.
An example is if you type in “San Francisco restaurants,” a part of the results page will include restaurants that your Facebook friends have “liked.” These types of results don’t appear for every query you type into Bing, and they don’t interfere with the “normal results,” but local business queries, for example, seem to trigger them (assuming you have Facebook friends who like what you’re searching for).
Facebook “like” data, generated by 500 million users, is a treasure trove that Google doesn’t necessarily have access to, which is why this is a big victory for Bing (even though Google has said there are “other ways” of getting the data if Facebook won’t hand it over”). Google’s strategy has always been to crawl the open web to find out what’s popular and relevant to searchers, but with the dawn of semi-closed giants like Facebook, Google finds itself potentially cut off from valuable social information when companies like Facebook play favorites.
Bing’s latest Facebook integration is a lot more sophisticated than simply shoving Tweets into results pages – that just tells you what people are talking about on Twitter regarding your search; this tells you what your friends, whom you trust, are saying about your search. It’s night and day in terms of trust and relevance.
So what does this mean for lawyers and marketers?
Many are skeptical about using certain kinds of social media for legal marketing, which is completely fair, because, for example, Facebook can be an awkward way of reaching potential clients for many lawyers. But as the marriage of search and social media is maturing, it’s clear that if search matters for lawyers (which it certainly does), then social media will too, since search engines are increasingly looking to social to influence search.
To give a concrete example today, if you want to rank highly when people type “Boston family lawyer” into Bing, then having lots of people Facebook “like” you or your firm could be a distinct advantage.
In the future you can expect that the social element of search will become even more sophisticated and smoothly integrated, where social data influences search rankings without being separated from them. In fact, it’s speculated that Google might be relying on social popularity as a part of their ranking algorithm already (it’s 6% of the ranking formula today, according to this survey). Search engines relying on social data makes total sense, because while inbound links used to be the sole measure of popularity on the web, nowadays Twitter mentions, Facebook likes, etc. are equally valid signals of popularity, and therefore search engines would be unwise to ignore them.
Aside from search engines needing to rely on social media to measure popularity because that’s how the web is evolving, it’s also clear that social media is becoming an important prize being fought over by Bing and Google, as both are vying for the best social media integration to one up each other. You can count on this social media arms race to continue, driven by two well funded competitors who are convinced it’s the future, right or wrong.
This isn’t just about Facebook and Twitter
Facebook and Twitter are not the end-all-be-all of social media. The big picture trend is that if people are taking the time to rate and review things online, then search engines want to incorporate that data into their search results. So if people tend to review lawyers on Avvo rather than Facebook, then search engines will be smart enough to look at Avvo rather than Facebook when deciding which website to serve for a “Seattle lawyer” search.
This is why, even today, Google includes Avvo reviews in some attorney searches.
So if Facebook and Twitter aren’t your cup of tea, don’t worry too much, because there’s an entire universe of social media out there, and the search engines are smart enough to look where the conversations are actually happening, rather than obsessing over Facebook/Twitter.
Building beachheads
How exactly lawyers can get more involved with social media is a big enough question that it’s best left for another day, but today’s Bing announcement highlights its importance. We are still in the very early days of the social and search merger, but it doesn’t take a crystal ball to see where this is going. The distinction between search and social is melting away, slowly but surely, and for lawyers and marketers, it makes sense to get started building some social media beachheads early on, or at the very least, start getting comfortable with social media.
