I’m pretty sure you all remember the day when Facebook unleashed Open Graph: the day we all got to see those “Like” buttons everywhere we go on the internet. It looks like Facebook isn’t stopping with seeing those darned like buttons all over the web – they’ve also launched a search engine that will display liked pages in search results.

The Open Graph Search Engine, as people have unofficially dubbed it, is – to paraphrase a few bloggers – a big, big deal. Right now, the system is a bit rough around the edges (more on that later) but if Facebook manages pull this off, it may mean that the like may very well be the new link. It means if you and your company want to matter on the web, you need to be on Facebook. There’s just no ignoring it.

Should Google worry?

People spend three times more time on Facebook over search engines now, according to one study, and obviously Zuckerberg and company have decided to take advantage of this and launch their own stealth engine, albeit stealthily. At first glance this looks like a good idea – people don’t need to go to Google to do a web search from now on.

Search results ranked by “likes” cannot compete with results produced by companies that actually crawl the web. There’s just no way Open Graph Search can produce reliable results. Also, since the system is reliant on Open Graph likes, this is a system that can be easily gamed. Remember the time when link farms could really mess up Google’s results? As early as now, we are seeing “Like Farms” – websites like Likey.net and LikeItPage that spam Facebook with random quotes and phrases.

No, Google and Bing need not worry. Well, not now, at least.

How to rank in Facebook search results in under 60 seconds

If you’re really intent on ranking on Facebook’s Open Graph search, AllFacebook.com has an interesting tutorial to do this, on any term, in under 60 seconds. They used a tool in l1k3.com to create 9 Open Graph objects, and instantly their pages were the top results.

This means you need to create your own Facebook fan page for your website and fill it up with fans before your competition does. Facebook considers fans as their SEO, so whoever amasses the most fans wins. And we all know about Facebook’s huge, huge, PageRank right? That might impact SERPs over on Google and Bing – your Facebook page might even outrank your website.

However, people search for apps, fan pages of the mundane (I BET THIS TOOTHBRUSH GETS MORE FANS THAN KE$HA),  and of course, other people on Facebook. If people are doing research, or just plain surfing the web, I think they’d be perfectly happy to use Google and Bing. Speaking of Bing, Facebook provides a web search option as well, and its being run by, well, Bing.

What do you think? Does Facebook’s Open Graph search have the potential to give Google and Bing a run for their money or will it end up as one of Facebook’s forgotten features? Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

Vic Carrara
MasterWebSoftware.com

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