aimClear Search Marketing Blog

In March 2010, usage of Facebook’s internal search engine jumped approximately 48% to peak at 2.7% of U.S. searches.  Though April and May U.S. search share dipped, these numbers are still rather substantial given Facebook search’s obvious people-focus and legendary limitations.  That said compared to Google’s monolithic 63.7 percent of American search share, Facebook’s internal search usage does not seem like a big deal.

Still, many businesses investing precious dollars in Facebook Ads, apps, pages, community management, etc…  want to understand how to rank inside of Facebook.  “How do we get our application to show up,” “What factors determine which fan or community pages show up in the FB search suggestion box,” “What attributes dictate which events rank to which users?” Business want to know. This post offers our study’s findings regarding Facebook SEO ranking factors along with ideas to maximize organic visibility in Facebook’s organic  SERPs.

We first studied Facebook internal search about a year ago after they announced search enhancements. The improvements were  pretty weak, easy to spam and of little use outside of finding other users to friend. In preparation for SMX Advanced Seattle 2010, conference organizers  invited us to take another dive into Facebook SEO. We found that some things have changed, though reached similar conclusions as last year. The bad news is that getting internal and external content ranked by way of  Facebook SEO is a pain in the ass. The good news is that users probably don’t use FB search the same way as Google and Bing–at least not yet.

Qualifying Users For SEO Visibility
To a large extent Facebook SEO is all about leading users and their friends to certain behaviors (like visiting a FB page, liking, joining, being invited to an event, etc…).   These touch points make certain internal and external content visible in the SERPs to individuals and groups of users.  We noted a number of ranking factors, weighted towards behavioral triggers, as “qualifying” users for organic prominence. Our test studied 6 Facebook users, aged 21-50 something. Test users participated across different networks countrywide. These accounts are mature, all between 3-4 years old.

As we discuss Facebook ranking factors, we say “this factor trumps that” or “X,Y, & Z” are a more important ranking factors. The relative values were  compared one to one. In other words one instance of ranking factor “Z” trumps one instance of ranking factor “X.”  In reality, multiple factors work in tandem. Keep that in mind as you digest our data.

This process is analogous to classic SEO ranking factors testing, where we might study the strength of one tag against the other straight up. Ranking factors are listed in suggested order of importance. Also I’d like to thank our team, especially Matt Peterson, who led our research project and contributed brilliant methodology and insights.  Ok, let’s get started.

Introducing the Facebook Suggest Box. It auto-fills, much like Google, populating as the user types first letters. This mechanism seems to channel users away from the SERPs, probably with cause for lack SERP’s quality. It actually takes some effort to locate and click on the little magnifying glass to the right or the “see more results” link at the bottom of the box. In other words, the suggest box is where the action is.

We don’t have data from Facebook to prove this but it seems to make sense that getting your content into the search suggest box is very important and may account for a good amount of outbound-after-search-clicks within Facebook. The good news is that the suggest box is probably the easiest node of FB organic to spam crack with rankings.

Facebook SEO “Suggest” Ranking Factors

1. Targets Users Who Have Friends w/ Keyword in Name
Facebook is all about people-first.

2. Any FB Places Users Previously Visited
Suggested search is heavily effected by personalization including previous visits. Compare Matt’s first search & SERPs on the left to the same query 3 days later after only visiting the top 2 pages.

3. Event(s) Users Have Been Invited To or Are Attending
FB’s including of event invitations in the suggest box may be an example of Facebook’s increased focus on events, such as adding event management to the feed back in May.  Look below to our recommendations at the end of this post for getting your message into the suggest box. It’s way too easy.

4. Event Users’ Friends are Attending
Same as above, but for users’ friends.

5. Page User Liked or Users’ Profiles Likes &  Interests
Pages that a user explicitly “likes” (via button on the page itself) are 5th most likely to show up in suggested search, as a singular factor. Also included are any keywords listed on a user’s profile under “Likes & Interests,” if a page doesn’t already exist, Facebook auto-generates a Community page and it ranks in suggested search. We think it’s stupid.

6. Page or Interest a Users’ Friend Likes
Same as above but applies to users’ friends’ pages, likes and interests.

7. Pages, Applications etc. By Highest Friend Count
Unpersonalized, pages, app’s and everything else fight it out on fan count to an extent.

If a users do click on the magnifying glass or the “see more results” links, Here’s how SERPs are offered: All Results, People, Pages, Groups, App’s, Events,  Web Results, Posts by Friends and Everybody.  For the purpose of this study, we did not delve into people.

Facebook SEO All Results Ranking Factors

1. Users Have Friends w/ Keyword in Name

2. Pages Users are a Fans of

3. Pages Users’ Friends are Fans of

4. Users Friends Social Mentions

5. Keyword appears somewhere  in a Wall Post thread

6. Pages with High Number of Fans

Facebook SEO Pages Ranking Factors
Algorithmically, pages’ ranking factors are the most complex,  hardest to document and have twisted anomalies. Pages SERPs are heavily affected by users’ historic personalization.  The results are so wild that isolating attributes for scoring fan and community page ranking factors is like pouring sweet nectar down a rat hole.

1. Community Pages Triumph – Powered By Your Friends
The last time we ran this test, there were no community pages and SERPs looked rough beyond personalization. Regular “official” pages dominated results. Now with the advent of Wiki-laden community pages that aggregate friends’ wall activity, classic FB pages are often relegated to second chair, their SERPs dominance threatened for many queries.

Note that the top page result for “pizza”  has a about .01% of the fans as the position 2 result.

It’s actually a community page,  rankings bolstered by mentions from the user’s friends.

2. Pages a User Already Likes
This is roughly the same as how things work in the Suggest box. Pages & other FB properties users already “like” take priority.

3. Pages w/ Most Friends
See below.

4. Skew towards Page User’s Friends Like
It was interesting to note that the raw friend count of pages often displace pages that users’ friends like, unlike the Suggest Box. Part of our ongoing studies are to test more personalized & unpersonalized factors in tandem.

Interesting “Shared” External Implications
Some Page search results now take users to external domains (other than Facebook.com).

The above result takes user’s to Eventful.com, where several FB social buttons are deployed.

Facebook SEO Groups Ranking Factors
Facebook Groups were Most Average or similar Unpersonalized SERPs across all testers.

1. Users Are Already Group Members

2. Users’ Friends Are Members

3. Search Keyword is in Group’s Title

4. Number of Total Group Users

5. Keyword is in Group’s Page Info

6. Keyword count in the body seems to have a small but documented effect on group rankings. This was observed across several groups with close member counts.

Keyword frequency or density in the group’s body text seem to impact rankings.

Either way, keywords in the body have a strong effect in tandem with user’s group membership.

Facebook SEO Apps’ Ranking Factors
Apps were the 2nd Most Consistent SERPs across our testers. Rankings are most similar to Groups.

1. Users are already fans or active users

2. User’s friends are  already fans or active users

3. Number of Fans of App’

4. Number of Active Users of App’
Rankings seem to correlate better with higher fan counts than active users.

5. Keyword in Apps’ Title
As with all SEO, move the keywords you want to rank to the upper left of the apps’ name.

6. Keyword in Apps’ Body

Facebook SEO Events Ranking Factors
Events SERPs are pretty messed up. Invites, number of Friend Invites, Number of Attendees & Geo Network proximity did not or barely correlated to Event SERPs. Just look at the mess below culled from 6 different users.

The only way we were able to produce consistent results for Events SERPs were by the following method:

1. Users RSVP as Attending (not Maybe Attending)

2. Then, Users Visit the Event Page Once

3. Then, the Search Keyword is within the first few words in the event name

Yep, Events search in Facebook really sucks.

Facebook SEO “Web” Results
There are a smattering of weak-ass Bing results regurgitated as “Web” results in FB organic SERPs. Just follow best practices for Bing SEO and the the rest will take care of itself. We wonder how many users actually click on these results. Here are some takeaways.

Results Correlated to Bing

Whatever Makes Bing Tick

Small personalizations

No Verticals, pure search

There’s not straight up correlation to ads we see for the same query on Bing.com

Adult Filter
As an aside, Facebook web search has an adult filter. We’re touched. Try searching for naughty words and you won’t find much in the Bing  Web Results.  I guess 420 million Facebook users don’t fuck or aren’t interested in fucking outside of FB.  There’s probably some technical reason in the interaction with Bing, just more scattered FB stuff. Try searching your favorite naughty words.  We find the adult filtering ironic and hypocritical, considering advertisers ability to, umm…, target to more *cough* personal qualities in Facebook users.

In other words, Facebook lets advertisers target naughty bits, but acts like the proclivities don’t exist outside of FB to their users.

5 Ways into Facebook Search

1. Mass Invites to Keyword Rich “Events”
It’s simple! Create an event with your desired keyword in the title & and invite like crazy. You can even paste in email addresses when you invite attendees! The user doesn’t have to attend or even visit the page, an invitation will usually net you a second spot in their Suggest Search. It’s vomitously spammy .

2. Ads to Facebook Properties – Personalization
This one isn’t totally free, but would work for the right application. Use some bright & shiny ads, including search PPC (assuming users are signed into FB), to get people to whatever Facebook landing page you want to rank. The user can like, comment on or just leave the page, it doesn’t matter.

They’ll start to see Personalization from Previous Visit on keyword queries related to the content title

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 9:51 am and is filed under SEO, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.