Microsoft recently announced new search tools on their popular Bing search engine - tools that use your social networks (Facebook in this case) to provide you with more relevant search results.
Of course some of our clients are asking how this change to Bing will affect their law firm search engine optimization efforts.
How it Works
The big idea behind this social search is this: People who are friends online tend to like the same types of things, so sharing friends' preferences in search results will help you to more easily find what you are looking for.
For example, if you are looking for a restaurant in San Francisco then Bing could show you some restaurants that your friends like.
An additional feature, not related to your friends' interests though, is a Facebook-powered people search. Facebook profile results can be shown in Bing when you search for someone by name.
How Do the Facebook/Bing Features Affect Law Firms?
The new social search features probably don't affect firms very much – at least right now. Facebook is generally used by people for personal connections and interests, not business. Most people don't ‘like' law firms or law firm web pages using Facebook – so it's unlikely that a search for your law firm on Bing would result in people seeing any social search results. Even if your firm did show up as being ‘liked' the designation lacks any significant meaning for business professionals who hire law firms.
The social search feature for finding people via Facebook profiles can be a bit more useful to law firms, but only slightly so. If someone is searching for an attorney by name using Bing then the attorney's Facebook profile is likely to show up in the social search results. However, even without the inclusion of the new social search tools, these results are likely to show in standard search results anyway. One also should consider that many people (attorneys included) consider their Facebook profiles to be for personal use, and may not want clients finding them more easily.
What's Next?
Search engines like Bing and Google are taking baby steps with social search right now. While today's social search tools may not be useful for law firms and many other businesses, tomorrow's social search integration may be very different.
For me, the most interesting thing about social networking is how willingly people provide information about themselves – large amounts of it. Much of this information is still untapped, and many more tools can and will be developed to take advantage of it. While new internet technology ideas often start with a focus on national consumer brands and ecommerce, I have no doubt that these ideas will be adapted to touch all businesses as they become more commonplace. Law firms should pay attention, but save SEO budgets for more common-sense approaches to SEO.