“Likes” Not “Links”: Google Downfall?
Facebook has announced a bold initiative which is sure to get the blood pumping over at Google.
A quick primer. Searching in Google is essentially flipping to the back of a book, locating a word, and referencing a list of pages that word appears on. Ever click on a link in Google search results, only to go to a non-existent page? This is because the famous (or infamous) Google Bot reviews all pages on the internet with links to and from other sites, and stores them in a list. A page may be indexed once, but not twice for a long time. During that time the page may be taken down. Powering this process is a unique algorithm, which largely depends on links to and from websites.
So what does this mean to me?
Facebook is essentially taking Google out at the knees by diminishing the importance of backlinks, and moving our attention over to “Likes” indicated by our friends on Facebook. Not only would this encourage Facebook users to become more active on Facebook, but this would most likely result in better search results. Now all that stands between Facebook and Google is half of the UCLA Math department to generate a scoring system that can compete with Google’s.
For now, we’ll just have to suffice with old-fashioned backlinks and antiquated indexing.
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