Meta
Search Engine Land is your source for Meta news and content. You’ll find a variety of up-to-date and authoritative resources, including the latest news, tactic-rich tutorials, and the latest data to help you work smarter and make better decisions.
What you read here is written by our experienced in-house team, and subject matter experts from leading brands and agencies.
Don’t miss out! Get the Search Engine Land newsletter delivered daily to your inbox. Subscribe for free!
Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook Search Is A Multiyear Voyage
During Facebook’s call with investors yesterday detailing another quarter of runaway financial success, CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent a good amount of time discussing one of the less social aspects of the social network: search. Facebook, he said, is committed to spending the company’s money and resources in a long-term effort to make searching within the […]
Is The Mobile Migration Of Graph Search Upon Us? New Facebook Test Uncovers Mobile Web Integration
We’ve been saying that it is just a matter of time for Facebook’s Graph Search to make its way to mobile devices. A test spotted yesterday by InsideFacebook shows that the launch may be close. The test shows an in-depth integration for mobile web users that contains the same bells and whistles as the desktop […]
Zuckerberg: Facebook Graph Search Is “A Five-Year Thing”
It’s been more than a year since Facebook introduced Graph Search to the world — its first foray into developing a serious search product for Facebook users. If you think development of Graph Search has been moving at a snail’s pace, you’re probably not alone. The rollout to all U.S. Facebook users took about seven […]
Where Do You Go When You’ve Maxed Out SEM?
Advertisers frequently tell me, “If you can hit my CPA target, my SEM budget is unlimited!” This is great in theory but often limited in practice — at some point, there simply are no more new keywords, or landing page tweaks, or ad text tests that can increase an advertiser’s SEM spend. Two years ago, […]
Facebook Will Launch Graph Search For Mobile “Pretty Soon”
According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg during Facebook’s recent earnings call, Facebook’s Graph Search will hit mobile devices ‘pretty soon.’ It’s now been a full year since Graph Search was launched and mobile integration only makes sense. According to cnet, Zuckerberg stated the following quote in regards to Graph Search on the call: “Pretty soon, I think, […]
Facebook Gives Yandex Access To Its Firehose In Return For Improved Presentation Of Its Own Content
Yandex has announced that it has signed a deal with Facebook which will give the leading search engine in Russia access to the Facebook firehose for “public” content published in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, other CIS countries and Turkey, where Yandex also operates. Content will be available for indexing by Yandex as soon as it has […]
Facebook Offers A Peek At How Graph Search For Status Updates Works
It’s been less than a month since Facebook expanded Graph Search to include status updates and posts, and the feature still isn’t available to all users. Nonetheless, Facebook search engineer Ashoat Tevosyan shared an “under the hood” look at how it works — and why it took so long to become reality. There’s nothing incredibly […]
How To Optimize For Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm
As you may have heard, Facebook EdgeRank is no more. A Facebook insider recently confirmed that the term [EdgeRank] is no longer being used internally (and hasn’t been for over two years) and noted that there are currently over 100,000 factors that go into what a user sees on their News Feed when users log into […]
Facebook To Retire “Who Can Look Up My Timeline By Name?” Search Setting For All Users
As of today, Facebook announced that it is completing the removal of its “Who can look up my timeline by name?” search setting. Users who still have access to it will begin seeing a reminder below their Facebook search bar that the setting is being retired. Last December, Facebook announced it was replacing the search […]
Facebook Now Lets You Search Your Posts & Status Updates In Graph Search
Facebook announced the launch of searching your posts and status updates within graph search. Facebook said, “Today, Graph Search will include posts and status updates.” With this, you “will be able to search for status updates, photo captions, check-ins and comments to find things shared with you.” I personally tried this, and it is not […]
Facebook Graph Search Fully Rolled Out To All US English Users
It’s official. If you are based in the United States and use the English language version of Facebook, you now have access to the Graph Search product. Announced back in January, Graph Search has taken a good bit of time to fully roll out, with many changes cropping up along the way. As Matt McGee mentioned last […]
Google Gets Lowest Score Ever In Customer Satisfaction Survey
There’s a mystery surrounding the latest customer satisfaction numbers released by ForeSee Results (for the American Customer Satisfaction Index [ACSI]). Published late last night, they indicate the lowest levels of consumer satisfaction with search engines (and portals) since 2003. The satisfaction scores for social sites are worse. According to the survey, which ranks sites on […]
Maximizing The Synergy Of Paid Search & Social
Are there any two online activities more ubiquitous than searching and socializing? According to eMarketer, “search is the first stop on the Web when it comes to finding information on anything,” and 90% of U.S. Internet adults regularly use search engines. Social is also huge. Research from Pew Internet shows that more than two out of […]
Facebook’s Graph Search Then & Now: What’s Changed
Facebook has started rolling out Graph Search to all US English users, a move that comes about seven months after the product first launched to a small number of users in mid-January. Graph Search has gone through some changes since then, perhaps none more obvious than when Facebook changed the search box white to make […]
Facebook’s Graph Search Expands To All US English Users
Facebook is opening up its Facebook Graph Search beta to all accounts that use US English. In an announcement today, Facebook says the expansion is underway now and will continue over the next few weeks. You’ll know you have Graph Search access when you see the new search box above. Facebook first launched Graph Search […]
Is Facebook Stepping Up to Search & Display?
If there is one company on a mission to capitalize on search and display, it’s Facebook. Recent evidence this year shows that the social giant is stepping up its game across both channels – in search, they have announced the Graph Search, and in display, they have made big waves with consistent announcements surrounding the […]
Facebook To End Sponsored Search Ads — For Now
Facebook has said that it’s getting rid of sponsored search results for the time being. It’s not walking away from “search advertising,” however. In the future, there will be ads in Graph Search. But, the company is still in the process of working all that out. Facebook told me this morning that, as a practical […]
Is Being Found Part Of Your Social Media Strategy?
Successful communication is all about getting the right message in front of the right people at the right time. In the first part of this two-part series on search and social media sites, I noted the undeniable importance of social media as evidenced by the sheer volume of social media updates posted daily on Twitter […]
When It Comes to Favorite Tech Companies, Google Ranks #1, Apple #2 & Facebook #3
When ranking the favorability of tech giants Google, Apple and Facebook, a recent Washington Post survey discovered that Google trumps both Apple and Facebook. According to the poll, 83 percent of the 1,007 Americans surveyed gave Google a favorable rating. Apple ranked second, with a 72 percent favorable rating. Facebook ranked least favorable, with only […]
Communicators, Take Note: The Deplorable State Of Social Search Is Changing
The rate at which people share information (profound and profane alike) on sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is staggering. 137 million status updates per day appear on Facebook, 230 million tweets are shared per day on Twitter and 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute — all numbers which increase daily. No […]
Graph Search Turns White, Looks More Like A Traditional Search Box
This morning many hardcore Facebook users will be surprised when they login and look towards the iconic top blue bar. The coloring of Graph Search has been inverted and now features a bright white centered search box in the midst of the top bar. Searches still act the same and provide the same results, the coloring has […]
How To Optimize For Facebook Graph Search: SEO Meets Social
As Facebook Graph Search evolves and marketers begin to come to grips with the opportunities provided from the social graph, it becomes clear that a combination of both search and social media tactics are required if brands aim to improve visibility in the graph search engine results. Today, I would like to focus on how […]
Facebook Offers An In-Depth Look At The Natural Language Interface Of Graph Search
Since its launch in January of this year, Facebook has been rolling out their Graph Search, allowing a limited number of users to perform queries with the natural language interface. In a post on their engineering blog today, Facebook explains how their natural language interface works, providing an in-depth look into the mechanics behind it. […]
Semantic & Graph-Based Search: The Future Face Of Search
In a June 2010 Semantic Web Meetup in San Diego, Peter Mika of Yahoo!’s research division gave a presentation entitled, “The future face of Search is Semantic for Facebook, Google and Yahoo!” As the title suggests, the presentation focused on the ever-growing use of semantic markup as a means for helping computers parse and understand […]
14 Ways Facebook Homes In On Local Search
With the announcement of Facebook Home, Facebook has pushed the accelerator on its local mobile strategy, which was already in high gear, thanks to Facebook Local Search and its big brother, Facebook Graph Search. By the end of 2013, I expect the social media giant to further strengthen its hold as the #2 local search […]
Live @ SMX London: Facebook’s New Graph Search & Its Marketing Implications
In January, Facebook unveiled its first major move into the search space: Facebook Graph Search. Graph Search is not just another index of the Web, however. Rather, it’s powered by what people are liking and sharing, leading to vastly different results than you’d see on Google. And while it’s not currently a direct threat to […]
While “Facebook Home” Keeps Google, Search Is Harder To Reach
Pick your survey, and one of the top activities on a smartphone is to use Facebook. That’s what the new Facebook Home is all about, making it easier for Facebook users to get Facebook. But it also makes another top activity — search — harder to do. On Android devices, search is almost always just […]
Will Mobile Apps Be Google’s Undoing? (Hint: No)
The New York Times offers an interesting story about Google and the competitive landscape of mobile. The headline is “As Web Search Goes Mobile, Competitors Chip at Google’s Lead.” The central idea of the article is that while Google is used on the PC equally to discover information and to navigate to specific sites, on smartphones […]
Facebook Nearby Is Now Facebook “Local Search”
Goodbye Facebook Nearby, hello Facebook Local Search. InsideFacebook points out that the company has renamed its mobile app feature “Nearby” as Facebook “local search.” Until late last year, Nearby was a friend-finder tool. Then it became a way to find local business recommendations. But, many users are undoubtedly still unaware of the change in functionality. The name change will […]
Facebook Graph Search Now Passing Keyword Data To Webmasters
When Facebook launched Graph Search earlier this year, a noticeable element missing to marketers was the lack of keyword data that was passed. Well, this weekend Glenn Gabe of G-Squared Interactive uncovered the fact that Facebook has begun passing keyword data within referral strings. The keyword data is passed from Facebook with a query string [q={keyword}] appended […]
Facebook Graph Search: The Good, The Bad, The UGLY!
Besides covering The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, we’ll also go into The How and The What of Facebook Graph Search, which launched in January 2013. Graph Search was hardly a surprise to many of us, yet its implementation to date has been interesting. If well-understood, it can be leveraged by marketers and brands; […]
Why Local Retailers Should Be Using Open Graph Markup
Last November, Chris Sherman highlighted the findings of Forrester research in his article, Forrester Rates The Top Large Search Marketing Agencies. As Chris noted, the Forrester report asked and answered this question: “What are the biggest search marketing challenges you expect to face in the next two years?” Today, I’m convinced the findings were not […]
Facebook Talks About Ranking Results In Graph Search, Confirms Plans For Post & Comment Search
Facebook’s engineering team is sharing some of the technical aspects of Graph Search, including a discussion today about how it indexes and ranks data via its Unicorn framework — the basis of its new Graph Search engine. In today’s blog post, Sriram Sankar talks about Facebook’s technical process for identifying and ranking Graph Search results […]
Facebook: No Plans For An External Search Engine
At this morning’s SMX West Keynote with Grady Burnett, Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions for Facebook, Grady said Facebook has no plans or intentions on launching an external search engine to compete with Google or Microsoft Bing. Grady Burnett explained that Facebook is focused on improving search from within Facebook through Graph Search. Facebook […]
Facebook Updates News Feed, No Impact On Graph Search (Today)
We’ve covered this morning’s changes and enhancements to Facebook News Feed over at Marketing Land: Facebook Newsfeed Evolving Into “The Best Personalized Newspaper” How To Get The New Facebook News Feed Power To Separate Feeds: A Look At The Filtering Inside The New Facebook News Feed Facebook’s New News Feed: The Before & After Look None […]
In Another “Right to Be Forgotten” Case, UK Officials Threaten Legal Action Against People Posting Pictures Of Convicted Killer
Although slightly different than the Spanish case discussed yesterday, the “right to be forgotten” has reared its head again — this time in the UK.” UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve has threatened legal action against anyone posting pictures of convicted killer Jon Venables online. TechDirt offers a short summary of the underlying facts of the […]
Facebook Shares How People Are Using Graph Search: Finding Friends Tops List
Today, Facebook has shared information that “hundreds of thousands” of people are using its Facebook Graph Search service, highlighting that people still use it like “old’ Facebook search — to find friends. Facebook then suggests some ways to go beyond that, for those who have the new search feature. New Ways To Find Friends From […]
These Five Websites Captured 20% Of All Search Result Clicks
Once in every five times that someone clicks a search result, it goes to one of five websites: Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Wikipedia or Amazon. That leaves about 80 percent of search clicks for the rest of us. Going further, the top 500 websites received almost 50 percent of all clicks from search results, and the […]
Reddit AMA Reveals Graph Search Has Been In The Works Since Early 2011 & Specs On How It Works
Last Friday, Lars Rasmussen, Facebook’s Director of Engineering, did an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit to discuss the ins-and-outs of Graph Search. Lars answered 20 questions from fellow Redditors shedding some light on the history, importance and technology behind Graph Search. According to Lars, the initial Graph Search was internally launched in Summer of […]
Facebook: The New Display & Search Channel
Facebook is the most preeminent social networking site in the world. It is not the first and probably won’t be the last, but it is likely the most important. Facebook usage is massive because users spend large lengths of time on the site. If Facebook was a country, and its users were citizens, then it […]