aimClear Search Marketing Blog

By now, you’ve probably caught wind of this thing called “Facebook Places.” In fact, unless your entire last week was consumed by SES San Francisco or Affiliate Summit you may have read, with bated breath,  live blog coverage from Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, CA. It was there CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed a crowded room that, according to Greg Sterling, resembled “a wedding or luau [rather] than a press conference.” Right. That’s creepy-ominous enough.

If by some chance you’re living under a rock and have not heard of Facebook Places, here’s a 140 character summary: Facebook Places allows users to share their location & the location of their friends by “checking in” at places via an iPhone app. To paraphrase general feedback from social circles: “So… basically, it’s just like Foursquare.” Maybe so. Maybe no. Regardless, the unveiling of this possibly game-changing platform certainly warrants a closer look.

In an effort to help provide just that, we compiled a list of 57 recently-published posts about Facebook Places– from launch coverage to field guides, privacy warnings to tactics on how biz owners & marketers can capitalize on the functionality.  Read on for the complete link roundup. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this summer in Facebook SEO Ranking Factors, 2010 Study Results, we explored the mechanics of Facebook search and theorized about the different ranking factors that make X page climb above Y group, Z event, and Q person in the organic SERPs. We noted that one of the most influential spaces in Facebook Search is the Facebook Suggest Box. “It auto-fills, much like Google, populating as the user types first letters,” our own Marty Weintraub explained. “This mechanism seems to channel users away from the SERPs, probably with cause for lack SERP’s quality.”

… and channel users away from SERPs it does. Now it seems, in some cases it channels users away from Facebook in general. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to another Wednesday installment of our Facebook English Speaking Demographic Series. Back in May, we picked through the 60 countries with the largest FB userbase (that also claim English as an official language) in Population Graph: Where Are Facebook English Speaking Users?. After that, we observed  the self-identifying trends in the UK, Ireland, Canada, India, the Philippines, South Africa and finally, Singapore. We’re sticking around in the Pacific Ocean this week and drilling into social segments of Facebook English speaking users in Hong Kong.

As of July 7, 2010, approximately 1,198,500 of Hong Kong’s English speaking residents were registered with Facebook. How do those 1 mil+ break down? Who openly likes lingerie? Who hates cigarette breath? Let’s take a peek… Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Wednesday, folks, and you know what that means- another installment of our Facebook English Speaking Demographic Series. Over a month ago, we took a look at the 60 countries with the largest FB userbase (that also claim English as an official language) in Population Graph: Where Are Facebook English Speaking Users?. Last week we explored the self-identifying trends in South Africa’s English Speaking Facebookers, and before that, dove into social segments the UK, Ireland, Canada, India and the Philippines.  Today we head back to Southeast Asia, and take a dip in the demographics of Facebook English speaking users in Singapore.

As of June 23, 2010, approximately 2,272,560 English speaking folks over in Singapore had Facebook accounts. What do you say we take a look-see at how they break down? Read the rest of this entry »