A mere six weeks ago, a significant tremor hit the disciplines of marketing and communications. Microsoft and Google both announced it would be licensing the Twitter data feed and integrating results in its search engines. Microsoft rolled out Twitter integration with Bing as a separate beta feature. Google said it was going to take some time to roll it out, presumably to get it right the first time.
It didn't take it long, as it made its integration live this week, and in my opinion it met expectations. When the initial announcements were made, I blogged about them, stating:
Whether or not businesses and marketers believe social media is important and should be deeply integrated into what they are doing, one thing most will agree is the importance of being prominent in search results. Most often, they care about Google results (but can't ignore Bing). It's one thing to use SEO to make sure their company web site comes up on the first page of results, but now what will appear underneath that result are the opinions of people about those companies as expressed on Twitter, Facebook or others. To me, this completely changes the game.
Based upon the how Google delivered on its integration, social media no longer can be underestimated or ignored. Unlike Bing and Yahoo, Google brings real-time social media-based mentions of any search term right to the main site. They appear in a frame that feeds in mentions on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networks. It also feeds newly published web pages from Google News.
This is a game changer because Google is now a real-time search engine that is bringing the opinions that people express online about products, services and brands directly to the top information source on the web. I still hear from marketers the despair about how social media means less control over messaging and brand perception. This further erodes that control, as they could until now reasonably manipulate where a web site comes up in search results. Search engine optimization now is completely different and requires any marketer to leverage social media channels as part of their programs.
Have you checked how the search results for your company or brand have changed?
