The fastest growing Search Engine? That would be Facebook
Searching is the web’s most common activity. Many of our Internet sessions start with a search of one form or another.
The brand fueling this search for much of the nineties was Yahoo. Then came the millenium and the baton was taken up by Google. Over the last 6 months it has been Microsoft’s Bing that has grabbed all the search headlines.
But now there’s a new kid on the block. Well I say new, it’s actually quite an old kid. A teenager in Internet years: the company experiencing the fastest growth in search traffic is apparently Facebook. According to the ComScore monthly search report, Facebook searches exploded by a massive 35% last month.
Yes, the website whose main purpose is Social Networking has introduced new search features which has catapulted it into the search big league. Members can search for stuff like photos, videos, links and even member updates. Whilst they used to have to hunt for these within other users’ profiles, the new Search Engine Results page (SERP) delivers them in categories, depending on what the member has searched for.
Its a little bit different to searching on Google – members are not going to be looking for products and services in this way. It is those product and service searches that advertisers really like, and the reason why Google has so much advertising revenue. But this is just the first step in Facebooks’ journey to become not just a social networking site, but a real player when it comes to search.
Facebook clear has real search ambition. The company has also enhanced its ability to provide real-time search, a battle ground that has only this year become more intense. And of course last month they bought FriendFeed, which will add another layer to the searchable, real time nature of the service.
Google isn’t taking this lying down. They are making the journey in the other direction, from search engine to social media enterprise. They have recently added lots of social features to their web properties in order to make them stickier. And their own moves towards real-time search shows they are defending their interests there too. But if Facebook search continues to grow at this rate, Google may have to move to protect its pure search homelands.
There were casualties in the search market too. Those experiencing declining search volumes were AskJeeves (down 4%), and Yahoo and AOL (who dropped 5% each).
Do you think Facebook has a chance to rival Google as a search engine? How will Facebook monetise their new services? Leave us a comment below.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Search Engines, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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