On Facebook, users — especially family and friends — frequently send each other links to interesting photos, news, online videos, and websites.
Facebook has become the largest player in distributing internet traffic, thanks to this “friend-casting” of information.
Research firm Compete Inc. reports that Facebook has overtaken search giant Google in driving primary traffic to large portals like Yahoo and MSN, and ranks in the leading positions for other sites as well.
This may change web operators’ marketing strategies — even with Google taking new steps to enter the social media world. Some experts believe social media may become the new internet search engines.
“People less often navigate the internet on their own and more often navigate thanks to friends’ activity or recommendations,” explained Dave Yovanno, CEO of Gigya Inc., a social media services company in Palo Alto, USA. “Of the trends that emerged four-to-five months ago, this is one of the most popular.” For years, web content creators have had to maintain optimal SEO levels to reach the top of search engines. Now companies like Gigya are pitching offers around Social Media Optimisation.
“Beyond mainstream search, marketers need to use social marketing — users have started searching for information in a multi-channel way. Clear channels have over time become tangled webs of connections.”
Analysing December web traffic, Compete’s online media blog head Jessica Ong found that 15% of traffic to large web portals like MSN, Yahoo, and AOL came from Facebook and MySpace. Most of that traffic (13%) is Facebook’s share.
This was unexpected, since Google customarily leads in all referral web categories. In other categories Google is still on top, but Facebook isn’t far behind.
“Looking at the whole picture, Facebook has become an integral part of the internet user experience. So advertisers need to pay more attention to social sites like Facebook and design ways to drive traffic from them.”
While banners, search ads, and TV ads currently reach larger audiences, social media’s influence is much stronger than traditional ad channels. Analyst David Berkowitz believes internet search isn’t losing ground. It has one important drawback though: users search 5% of the time and spend 95% at the “destination”. And social media quickly took a chunk of that 95%. Google became more competitive in social after acquiring Aardvark, a social media search engine, and launching Google Buzz.
