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The Google to Facebook Shift

By Elmar Sandyck

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 17Dec2010 Word count: 440 Viewed: 351 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

It is still a fact that Google lords it over in the search engine world.

If I make a search about something online, I automatically tune in to Google as my go-to search engine. I just log-in to www.google.com, look for the ubiquitous search box, type in the keywords that I wanted to search on and voila! - pages and pages of suggested links to websites that may just hold the answer to my queries. Simple.

But the search scenario is slowly changing. Online searches are now shifting from a mere cold set of keywords to a more meaningful and personal one.

And this is all thanks to Facebook.

No wonder Google is at arms as the silent rivalry between these two giants is finally revealed! Especially now with the advent of Facebook for marketing purposes.

The Facebook Threat

Facebook, the most popular and most widely-used social networking site, is home to students, professionals, entrepreneurs, home-based workers, and almost everybody who has a presence in the online world.

It is the go-to social networking site that keeps everybody connected from all over the world. It's a community by itself and it is undoubtedly one of the most influential and busiest of all web sites.

In signing up for Facebook, you are asked some relatively personal information about age, gender, location, interests, preferences, and other personal data that would be useful in profiling. This profiling or global mapping of everybody, how they're related to everybody, and shared interests could be used as personalized, targeted, and relevant information for marketing purposes.

Just imagine the many marketing possibilities that you can glean from this data alone. If you already have a captured audience on Facebook, why not stay on Facebook and do your marketing activities there? Facebook for marketing. I'd be scared, too, if I were Google!

The Irresistible Opportunity

Just like what I wrote in my previous article, knowledge of the target market is one of the essential things a good marketer should possess. The narrower or the more specific the data, the better. User data as the basis of the so-called behavioral targeting is what makes Facebook a real and live threat to Google. From the marketer's point of view, this is a perfect vehicle to do niche marketing based on the available demographics. Marketers can have a field day just scrolling over various profiles of all Facebook users and appropriately segregating them according to who they want to target.

So, what's your take on this? Is the Facebook threat to Google's supremacy a real one? Is there a great future in using Facebook for marketing?

You tell me.

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