In December, Google announced that “real time” search results were here. What are real time results you may ask? Real time results are posts from twitter, friend feed, Google News and other micro blogging and news sites with updates. Also in December, Google mentioned that Facebook updates would be included soon, but not immediately, due to to a deal between Bing and Facebook that gives them the rights to that data.
Well now the time has come for Facebook data to be included in Google Search Results. Don’t worry, your personal status updates won’t show up in your bosses searches. But Facebook Fan Page updates will begin to be included in the results, which is another great reason to have a fan page for your business. And for those of you with fan pages, it is time to make sure that you are using them.
Fan page updates will be available on a Search Result page in the usual places. Both in the Latest results section, in line with the other search results, as well as in the updates category in the search option.
For more information, here are more details from the Google Blog
Interesting follow up in Financial Times today… will the FB and Google courtship sour?
Financial Times Breaking News
Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google
Facebook has overtaken Google in popularity among US web users, with industry data showing the social networking site scored more hits than the search engine last week. Research firm Hitwise said Facebook’s home page accounted for 7.07 per cent of web traffic against Google’s 7.03 per cent.
http://link.ft.com/r/R5WAEE/KEJQRM/BMO1H/0GAOEP/9Z7QXW/RF/h