Pagerank > Edgerank, SEO > FEO, Google paid ads > Facebook paid posts

[awebapart.com]

Apologies for not picking up on this earlier, but I've just found an interesting article on Facebook Edgerank (May 2012), how Facebook determines what appears in a person's news feed.

I only found the article after hearing a couple of companies on facebook commenting today on how facebook are charging some page owners to help their posts get to their fans.

It got me thinking that Facebook are almost trying to treat the personal news feed like a google search results page, where the search is "show me news that I'm interested in". And just like google has algorithms, one of them being Pagerank, facebook have the Edgerank algorithm. And just like there are SEO people commenting on google's algorithms, there are now other people (e.g. author of the above article) commenting on facebook's algorithms. What shall we call them? FEOs? Facebook Engine Optimisation? Facebook Edgerank Optimisation? FNOs? Facebook Newsfeed Optimisation?

And just like Google are making search pay by blending in paid ads, Facebook are trying to do something similar blending in promoted posts to newsfeeds.

It's all very amusing, and who knows perhaps it will give us people here whole new areas and algorithms to argue over!

I'm a bit sceptical of whether facebook will be successful with this. Would it not end up with a load of promoted posts in a user's newsfeed, rather than the really interesting stuff they want to see like the latest pictures of their friend's cats? I'm also a bit confused as to how some of it can work given the fact that there is an option to view the newsfeed in simple "most recent first" date order.

Once again apologies for being a bit slow on this, I'm sure this is old news for a lot of people, but I'm a bit of a latecomer to the facebook world.

 

[eventdomain]

Facebook using paid posts - well, it was on the cards wasn't it eg: they got major backers and all that.

SEO is buggered, Google devaluing articles and some link types, which equates to what, 20'000 directory options - many will be hit hard I'd imagine - so whats left, social media? and what happens when those boys all go paid.

Facebook has gone paid, but did Twitter go paid yet? I think content publishing is all thats left isnt it.

 

[aidan1980]

SEO is buggered

no it isn't, it's your knowledge of seo that's buggered

 

[Ali-v-8]

Facebooks ad delivery system uses the users Likes, statuses and personal information to deliver a relevant advert to the user. IMO next best thing to an actual search. CPC is still pretty cheap - still to many browsers.

@ED - You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about - An SEO's job is never the same from one day to the next - We develop site on experience and changes in algorithms - this is something you have yet to understand.

 

[awebapart.com]

I was referring more to the algorithm facebook use in the display of normal newsfeed content, as opposed to the algorithm used for ads.

On top of that, yes facebook are pushing facebook page owners to use ads too. The fishy thing is that facebook page owners with not many likes are encouraged to pay for ads to get more likes, in some cases from dodgy sources/fake likers, but now it seems that those facebook page owners who have lots of likes are now being told by facebook they have too many likes to use the content posting service for free and need to to pay for the privilege of creating posts that appear in their liker's newsfeeds.

Which is a bit like google wanting to charge website owners so their normal websites (not ads) appear in the natural search results.

 

[eventdomain]

no it isn't, it's your knowledge of seo that's buggered

I deliver 1000's of visitors per client compared to any SEO you can muster. In 09/10, I delivered 93'000 visitors to clients in one category alone and last year gave away 480'000 links for free....

With all respect for you having a go at the internet thing, but your bookie blog is nowhere compared to others, so until you can generate a million of anything to it, don't make out your some guru just yet eh.

Nice PR5 by the way

 

[shadesofblue]

I deliver 1000's of visitors per client compared to any SEO you can muster. In 09/10, I delivered 93'000 visitors to clients in one category alone and last year gave away 480'000 links for free....

With all respect for you having a go at the internet thing, but your bookie blog is nowhere compared to others, so until you can generate a million of anything to it, don't make out your some guru just yet eh.

Nice PR5 by the way

Don't forget your 100% bookmark rate

http://www.eventdomain.co.uk/blogevent/

 

[webgeek]

Stumbleupon does 5 billion hits a month, but does the traffic convert? No.

I'll take a 1000 laser targeted visitors coming from buying phrases on sites they trust over 100,000 junk visitors clicking because they're bored.

Facebook may convert a lot better than SU, and paid ads will drive traffic/sales, but until people test the cost per acquisition and cost per conversion, there's a lot of speculation about the value of that traffic in relation to other channels.

 

[Ali-v-8]

Sorry but I optimised a site that deliver 163,399 unique visitors a day with over 200,000,000+ impressions a week. I am sorry ED but your in a much lower league if you think thats impressive.,

I deliver 1000's of visitors per client compared to any SEO you can muster. In 09/10, I delivered 93'000 visitors to clients in one category alone and last year gave away 480'000 links for free....

With all respect for you having a go at the internet thing, but your bookie blog is nowhere compared to others, so until you can generate a million of anything to it, don't make out your some guru just yet eh.

Nice PR5 by the way

 

[eventdomain]

Sorry but I optimised a site that deliver 163,399

Maybe, but why are you claiming success from the Founder's hard work, it ain't your site mate.


@ webgeek

Stumbleupon does 5 billion hits a month, but does the traffic convert?

Conversion is about what the visitors do next on arrival, trouble is the social content sites eg: Friendster/Facebook are full of people typing about what they had for dinner or that they just got off the phone from their mates or 'I just stroked my dog or cat' - I mean what the hell It's useless banter, the content is social waffle from people thinking it'll add meaning to their lives. Stumbleupon is a bit different, so its conversion will be different and better for businesses maybe, than Facebooks users.

Then again, like I keep saying - there are sites out there that get a niche audience (maybe not on Friendster's scale) but they convert like crazy and bring results and is why they are used.