Is the New Facebook ‘Like Button’ Something SEO will Like?	Visited: 3658 5.0/5.0 (2 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Roger Janik May 05, 2010

Roger Janik

Roger Janik is the President and Founder of ServerSideDesign.com – The Web Marketers. ServerSideDesign was founded in 2004 and over the years has grown to a staff of well-rounded professionals that handle tasks such as SEO copywriting, SEO programming, link building, social networking, pay per click management, web design, and reporting. ServerSideDesign is a proud member of the BBB, SEMPO and many other prestigious organizations. They were named as a top 10 company in 2007 for both Organic SEO and Link Popularity by Promotion World.

Roger Janik has written 46 articles for PromotionWorld.

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Over the last year, search engine optimizers and web marketers have found that the search engine wars have definitely heated up and in many ways changed the landscape that we apply our craft to.  And as many in the industry are now getting more comfortable with the new changes and challenges that Google, Bing and Yahoo have implemented in the last year, a new potential war is brewing, this time the war of the social networks. 

Facebook, the largest social networking destination on the web, is now making waves and directly challenging the search engines and other social networks- (some say specifically Google) by developing innovations that can severely limit search engines ability to track what’s popular and relevant on the web.  This new innovation by Facebook comes in the form of a simple button called the Facebook Like button.

What is the Like Button?

While it is simply just a button, the implications of millions of websites and FB account holders using it can have a huge effect on Google’s ability to not only scrape the web, but rank it appropriately.  Instead of FB using the current system of html code to link from one entity to another, FB instead opted to create a closed, proprietary system which only FB controls (more on this later). 

Web sites using the Like button can now easily drive web traffic from FB more effectively utilizing this button.  For instance, a FB user can click on your website’s Like button and the content from your site can easily be delivered to that user's account and shared.  One of the more popular examples are news sites.  A FB visitor clicks on a news site's Like button and can now show the content on their FB page.  In addition, website’s can customize the experience it sends to FB users giving it an additional appeal to web marketers.

Why this Button is Not 'Liked' by Google

Google has done an excellent job over the last decade organizing and ranking relevant content. In fact, whether you are looking for information that was posted over 10 years ago or just a few seconds ago, finding quality content with Google is extremely easy and convenient.  With Web 2.0 came social networks, and many web users slowly migrated toward networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.  While not all, but this has created a type of web user that tends to stay in one "space" for most of their web needs – this even includes search.  And while MySpace, Twitter and other social networks use html links which Google can easily scrape and index, as FB moves to block indexing by search engines and relies on their proprietary code (which is used by the Like button) Google will not have access to index a wide range of information, websites and connections that are and will be created.  This is why the Like button can prove to be a huge disadvantage to Google and why not only the major search engines but many privacy and open source advocates are demanding that FB utilize open source code so that the web stays open to all for indexing and (where SEO and web marketing is involved) metrics.

Optimizing Your Website for FB Using the Like Button

Adding a Like button to your website is a very easy process.  All it takes is adding a few lines of code to your website.  However, it should be noted that since it has been rolled out fairly recently, there have been a few glitches such as problems working with webpages that already are connected to FB and the number shared being counted can be lower than in actuality.  Once the button is on your site, visitors can click on your Like button and not only receive content from your website, but show to their friends that they found your content relevant.  So now, not only can you easily reach out to visitors that have visited your site, but those visitors now showcase your content as well on their FB pages.  As you can see, exposure of one visitor to your website can create exposure to an exponential amount of individuals in a relatively short period of time going viral very easily.

In addition to simply adding the Like button on your site, you should seriously consider the placement of this button along with the look of the button.  While the button's design can not be changed yet (there was talk of using Javascript to change the color and font if you use the JS based version - not the iframe version) you may want to consider changing the background color of the page (if you don't have much white space available).  For some web developers this might create headaches.  Besides, the background color of where you place the button, placement is obviously always an issue.  However, if you utilize "Addthis" type buttons, you should have already found a comfortable area to place the Like button.

It should be noted that with the FB Like button you have the ability to control what can be viewed on a visitor's page when they click your button.  This does add more work to the process of set up and does require adding meta data to your web site's page headers.  The Open Graph protocol which has also been released by FB can be helpful optimizing your site for the FB Like button as it enables you to actually integrate the pages that visitors view into a sort of social graph.  These visual representations can then easily establish social connections which can then be tracked by individuals.  You can learn more about FB's Open Graph protocol at htttp://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph

Short Term and Long Term Ramifications of FB's Like Button

No doubt, Facebook is definitely looking for ways to control the social side of the web and this means wrestling control from Google.  If FB can control the code that most social connections are made with, Google will likely lose much clout on the web.  While it is way too early to tell how FB's strategy will all pan out, for those that utilize FB currently and find value in it for your business or client's, the Like button is fairly easy to implement.  While the Like button is not a Google-Killer, you can definitely say that FB has made its move.  So far, about 50K sites have added the button and more will surely continue to do so, however there are many privacy concerns, along with the fact that many users might not utilize it.  Other issues that can greatly affect the impact of the Like button is the move for the Like button to switch to an open source code that can be used by every network, search engine and individual.  Only time will tell, we will be monitoring the situation and reporting back.