Some perspective – why the real threat to Facebook is from Google search

There are many articles talking about the battle between Facebook and Google+ and the threat that Google plays with a competing social network to Facebook. In my opinion, this is not only premature but also slightly misguided as it takes the focus off the biggest threat that Facebook actually face from Google. And this lies in the very thing that makes Google the internet giant that it is : search. Google is the single biggest gatekeeper to information on the internet, second only to the world wide web itself. With the launch of G+ they have sought to become both the gatekeeper and the end destination for users. While I am sceptical of the strength of G+ as a social network beyond the initial buzz, you can’t afford to ignore the fact that Google are an important player in deciding the outcome of Facebook as they control a significant portion of the traffic that finds itself arriving at Facebook online.

The role of search

PageLever have recently produced a study that show the importance of search traffic and particularly Google, when it comes to referral traffic to Pages. They found that Google makes up 27.57% of the external search traffic to Facebook Pages, far outperforming other search networks :

Combine this with the fact that Google owns Youtube and that gives them ownership of 30.61% of the search traffic to Facebook ; a significant figure when you consider that search traffic makes up nearly 10% of the total traffic to Facebook Pages alone. This is a hugely important channel for the overall Facebook platform and particularly Facebook Pages, which is what provides Facebook with a large percentage of its traffic and an even larger percentage of its advertising revenue. And the fact remains that Google can effectively switch this off at any time.

The fact is that Google remain the most important players when it comes to online search. This is unlikely to change, at least in the immediate years and so this gives them a significant role in the development of Facebook, however indirectly. Google effectively own a magic switch that determines which sites rank where. This can be done either indirectly such as a discrete change in the search algorithm, or directly, which we saw with the introduction of Youtube videos into Google’s search engine results pages.

G+ is really social search

Right now everyone is focusing on what’s happening with G+ itself as a platform, but this is the wrong place to look. Its future as a social platform where the socialising happens within the site itself is questionable. It doesn’t seem to be providing much value other than to a small group of people who you would normally fit in the ‘early adopter’ category. But if you take the focus outside of the site itself and look at what Google can do by copying some of the better features of G+ over into the search engine, then you have a very different situation on your hands altogether. Right now, no-one is owning social search, but arguably no-one has a better chance at this than Google. While they’re busy learning the make-up of a social network, they are developing intelligence that can be bedded into the search experience directly.

They are building up data that allows them to see first hand the pyschology behind a social experience online and this intelligence can be transferred over into the Google search experience to completely transform the way in which we search and the role that Google plays in the development of social technologies : something that up until now they have been on the peripheries of while others have overtaken. And this is the most direct threat they pose to Facebook. Not only for the power they hold to allow people to find their way to Facebook in the first place, but in what they can do to stop people leaving their search engine for Facebook, to make the Google search experience more innately social.