Google tweeted Feb. 24 that public status updates posted to Facebook Pages are now part of Google’s real-time search results.
Facebook Pages are basically advertising tools for organizations, businesses, celebrities and bands to blast out info and updates information to fans. The Pages are bonafide, meaning users don’t have to spend time worrying whether or not the content is being falsely produced by some publicity or money-seeking opportunist.
Danny Sullivan pounced on the news for Search Engine Land, offering screenshots and a list of sources the world’s leading search engine now indexes in real-time.
See Facebook Pages results here:
Interestingly, the indexing of Facebook Pages comes more than a week after MySpace status updates went live on Google in real time. Google Buzz posts were rendered in real-time shortly after the Buzz launch this month.
What does all of this real-time minutiae mean? Depends on who is answering the question. If you’re a search engine marketer without a Facebook Page, do it now that Google is indexing them in real-time. You may get more eyeballs that way. Then again, you may not.
My primary source for real-time is still Twitter. Just as I use Google for the traditional searches, such as directions, restaurants, etc., I check Twitter trends for the now.
By indexing more than a dozen sources, Google hopes that it will become the main source of searches for the now but I’m not so sure that will happen.
For the same reason I go to Google for old-school, legacy searches and Twitter for real-time, I use Facebook to keep up with people I haven’t seen in awhile. I certainly wouldn’t go to Google for Facebook Pages, or any Facebook content either.
What I’m getting at is that I use Facebook, Twitter and Google for three different things because that’s what I’m comfortable with. Is that strange? Or do you find yourselves flocking to Google, Facebook or Twitter as a one-stop shop for your digital info needs?
No, you don’t. Like buffalo on the wild plain, most people are digital grazers. They like to flit from service to service for the same reason everyone doesn’t shop solely at Wal-Mart.
By indexing all the sources it can real-time, on top of the traditional search and in addition to the myriad Web services and Google Apps, Google is trying to be that Wal-Mart.
Which is fine. It’s just another sign of Google Creep.