Is Facebook helping kill generic domains?

[JMOT]

You watch TV ads these days. LOADS of companies are choosing to put facebook on in their commercial to drive traffic to their FB page rather than their own website where they feel they can engage audiences better as they are captive.

Even a freeking wood stain company http://www.facebook.com/Cuprinol have gotten 11k normans to "like" their promo since starting their recent campaign.

Right or wrong I can only see this trend surging forward and the sale of generics to big companies falling as those moronic/lazy (un)creative agencies place all their eggs in the FB basket!

 

[rob]

I can see your point, and I was thinking facebook in ads was being replaced with twitter.

That says it all

 

[anthony]

You watch TV ads these days. LOADS of companies are choosing to put facebook on in their commercial to drive traffic to their FB page rather than their own website where they feel they can engage audiences better as they are captive.

Even a freeking wood stain company http://www.facebook.com/Cuprinol have gotten 11k normans to "like" their promo since starting their recent campaign.

Right or wrong I can only see this trend surging forward and the sale of generics to big companies falling as those moronic/lazy (un)creative agencies place all their eggs in the FB basket!

Facebook habits provide oodles more direct personal information than a site visit, or twitter, or a blog. All the big companies are being advised to choose Facebook for this very reason, it's a great feedback tool for them.

 

[Darren]

I mentioned something similar to this a while ago regarding advertisements using search for "company product / service" instead of using a domain name.

 

[doodlebug]

I mentioned something similar to this a while ago regarding advertisements using search for "company product / service" instead of using a domain name.

Can't some SEO wizz manipulate the terms and get their site reanked at number 1 for whatever the company says to search for ?

 

[Darren]

Yes my thoughts exactly.

 

[Aaron Clifford]

I can't remember off the top of my head, but I've seen one or two "search for this" on google with the sites in question not ranking number one, It's not as reliable as go to "company.co.uk" as rankings can change, site addresses do not (and if they do, they can update the advert!).

 

[rob]

France etc have banned mention of twitter and facebook it seems on TV news.


Brill! http://www.whatsthenumberfor.co.uk is suprisingly useful!

 

[binny]

Facebook doesn't work for business products at all imo and Twitter is shite it'll be gone in 3 years

 

[newguy]

I can't remember off the top of my head, but I've seen one or two "search for this" on google with the sites in question not ranking number one, It's not as reliable as go to "company.co.uk" as rankings can change, site addresses do not (and if they do, they can update the advert!).

Yeah, I've noticed that too. It's bizarre that they would use this strategy, since positioning can change from one day to the day anyway.

 

[Blossom]

The difference is that it's big companies using Facebook URLs...because of the social aspect, and because 9 times out of 10 the customer will know/guess their website address anyway. Psychologically, I doubt there's anything new on the Apple website when I see an ad, but if there's a Facebook URL I'll probably nip along to see if there are any deals etc. It doesn't help that a lot of companies seem to use it because their websites are so badly structured from a usability perspective. Especially the ones that think it's cool to show a Flash movie for ten minutes.

 

[tafuta]

Facebook have been doing a LOT of dodgy SEO - Gogle "Texas hold Em" , or see http://explicitly.me/facebook-grayhat-seo-spam - they are definately trying to take over the SERPs for a lot of 1000+ monthly search keywords...

 

[tafuta]

I can't remember off the top of my head, but I've seen one or two "search for this" on google with the sites in question not ranking number one, It's not as reliable as go to "company.co.uk" as rankings can change, site addresses do not (and if they do, they can update the advert!).

That would be Orange - "I am" when they first launched, then the Pirate of the Car new film, that daft scifi film "I am Number Four" - problem is marketers dont ask the SEOs first

 

[Blossom]

http://explicitly.me/facebook-grayhat-seo-spam

Meh, that article isn't great imo.

 

[tafuta]

Meh, that article isn't great imo.

lol really - Do tell why? (no offense - just curious... its been covered in a number of large SEO sites in the UK and US)

 

[Blossom]

Well, yes, Facebook wasn't affected by the Panda update - how does that prove anything about greyhat SEO tactics?

Yes, they may be (or may have been) targeting the long-tail with those community pages - but I think they've realised that people coming across an empty page isn't going to do much for them. The next stop for the visitor is news feed or close tab.

Of course they have nofollow on all external links - so do all the big social networks and content aggregation sites (aside from the big review sites).

In the flash flood example, Google knows which page is the original authority source - Wikipedia is ranked way above the Facebook page, so it's not doing FB any favours anyway. It's just another reason for people to stay on FB rather than leave and go to Wikipedia.

They don't need to make attempts to rank for long tail results (whether or not they want to is another question). Most of their results in Google are because of their users' content, not their own.

In my opinion, Facebook's focus is a) get as integrated with the web as possible so people have fewer and fewer reasons to leave Facebook and b) make more money by developing credits, ads, etc. Whilst targeting long tail is involved with those things to some degree, I don't think it's the final objective. Their original questions feature, which would have been great for targeting search and rivalling eHow, Yahoo Answers etc., was never used or intended to be used to rank higher in search.

 

[tafuta]

That is well put - I dont agree with your premise (having been tracking FB SERP / SEO policy changes for last 2 years) but I think your points hold their own

 

[Alien]

Saw a SKY ad for a new film release the other day, it had a FB page rather than co.uk or .com - can't remember for the life of me what it was now! LOL.

 

[djbw]

I think it's mainly for brand awareness. As others have said Facebook are just trying to create their own web. Didn't AOL fail at doing that? I don't think it's anything to worry about, perhaps just consider it like another TLD?

 

[Nyams Josh]

Facebook is just another online marketing strategy. Companies use it to get more potential buyers. People join the fan pages of companies and from there they might click the link that will direct them to their websites. So, facebook is not helping in killing generic domains.