The recent announcement by Facebook that they will be incorporating a search of the Facebook Graph into their search has stirred conversations among online marketers around the world, as well as specifically in the real esate industry. Search engine experts differ on how much impact that Graph Search will have over the long term, but there are a couple of strong implications that can be drawn from Facebook’s beta launch of it.
1) Facebook clearly wants to challenge Google for the market and mind share of search. Will a billion accounts worldwide, they are a significant challenger to Google in the long run.
2) Facebook also clearly has more in depth knowledge of their users, allowing them to customize searches based on many more factors than the google algorithm.
3) It is a space that REALTORS should watch and leverage to build their businesses. Even though we do not know the long term implications, we DO know the implications of being late to arrive to the party (so to speak).
Several real estate industry sites have started to examine marketing on Facebook more closely. Real Estate Webmasters whose forum has one of the largest groups of tech savvy agents have opened up a forum specifically for discussing what strategies work on Facebook.
The conversation has been somewhat limited because there are a relatively small number of beta accounts at the moment, but that will change and more blogs / commentary will follow quickly.
So what do you think that this means for REALTORS?
We welcome your opinions below.
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I definitely think Facebook will be able to claim its share of the market probably inline with MSN and Yahoo but overtime it may prove to be a real competitor for Google due to the information that they will be able to gather about their users. My first questions was that would people that you are friends with rank better for your personal results or would their be a section for that?
I’m excited to see what REW puts together to touch base on this at their next Summit. Can’t say I’ve used the feature much since it has been released.
This is clearly something that REALTORS and Mortgage lenders should keep their eye on. Facebook seems to want to provide relevant search options to the people on their site and we as online marketers should stay ahead of the game. I do not think we can afford to miss out.
we are using every tools that internet and websites can provide us for bloggers and marketers we should be ahead in every sector of marketing and SEO and SMO too.
Real Estate Agents should definitely watch this new Facebook feature as it could provide a great way for them to market to potential clients.
Facebook seems to be getting better. I have seen more on my posts showing up in the SERPs. I think as a Realtor it is probably a good business practice to post at least 4-5 days a week on all of the major social sites.
I’m excited about this, it will put our listings in front of a much more focused group.
In its current state, I see no use at all for Graph Search. We’ll see how they build on it though, they certainly have a lot of data to pull from. I think eventually it could turn into the best search engine for local amenities, reviews, businesses, etc.