Why Social Media is Not Ruining Search Results

Now if you’ve been trolling the web like me, you may have stumbled across a post on Search Engine Land that talks about how social media is ruining search. The author talks about how search engine results pages (SERPs) should return both relevant and timely results – with an emphasis on relevance, while acknowledging that timeliness has it’s place – for example it helps consumers determine that a product is out of stock on an online retail site. However (the author argues), user generated content is not always authoritative and compromises the quality of search results; and for that reason social media should not be included in SERPs.

I respectfully disagree. Here are three good reasons why.

Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009

Last week, Twitter revealed its list of the most-discussed topics of 2009, based on Twitter’s trending topics. Now Facebook has come out with their own list, based on data from the millions of daily status updates of its users.

While the world’s largest social network took a different approach than its upstart competitor (explanation below), it did match some of Twitter’s “most discussed” topics of 2009. However, it seems as if Facebook’s data analysis has revealed that people care a great deal about family (#5), Facebook apps (#1), Lady Gaga (#12), and, yes, even Twitter (#10).

Firefox 3.5 Takes the Top Spot Worldwide

Firefox hit a new milestone today, as version 3.5 overtook Internet Explorer 7.0 with nearly 22% of the browser market, according to statistics from web analytics service StatCounter. This comes on the heels of statistics we saw earlier this month, which showed Firefox overtaking IE for overall usage in Germany.

YouTube is the Top Social Media Innovation of the Decade

As the decade draws to a close, there’s at least one thing we can say about the social media space with a fairly high level of confidence: it’s here to stay. That said, looking ahead to the next ten years, it’s incredibly hard to predict how we’ll use social media — let alone which services will still be relevant — when we get to 2020.