The Latest on Google and Facebook
Today, I’ve got a few small but important things about Google and Facebook I thought you’d want to know about.
You know that I like to let you know about ways to keep yourself and your online businesses safe and that I like to tell you about things I find out before “the masses” know about them.
So, this time I’m going to share a potentially serious and damaging security issue with Facebook apps, a very new test Google has doing that will impact your Web sites and a new service that Google is starting to share with the public.
Facebook E-commerce
The first is about Facebook E-commerce and how people are writing dangerous Facebook Apps.
Facebook Apps is a great concept, you can create little software programs to do all kinds of things, including selling things.
However, numerous malicious apps have recently been found on the social networking site and the number of them is increasing at an alarming rate.
All you can do is be careful where you click and be sure to look at the Web address (URL) displayed in the address box.
For marketers, this is sad because Facebook is another distribution channel and just started letting people to sell physical goods through Apps.
Facebook’s potential for e-commerce is huge but security concerns, already an obstacle on the Web, will hurt the use of Facebook for marketing purpose even more.
Facebook has been moving into other services including provide commerce and shopping cart type facilities (think PayPal) but until the security issues are resolved most marketers will avoid Facebook, which is a shame.
As marketers we need to be adding a lot of trust builders (strong guarantees, contact information, testimonials, etc.) to our Facebook E-commerce pages.
Do you think people will be willing to buy on Facebook? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
Google’s Started Dropping Breadcrumbs
Google seems to be testing something new — aren’t they always!
That something is putting breadcrumbs in some of their search results; yes, right in there with the search results.
If you don’t know what breadcrumbs on a Web page are, they show the “path” to the page to help you navigate through the site. You’ve probably seen them, they usually look something like: Home > News > Social Media > Facebook.
Anyway, I, and a few others I know, have seen Google displaying breadcrumbs in a few different places in the results to some searches.
This plays into what we’ve talked about before; the latest time was in the Google Caffeine post.
Google wants to do the best job it can in its results and they have repeatedly said they like Web sites with good site architecture.
Knowing Google, site architecture will eventually impact search results position so that’s all the more reason to clean your site architecture up now, with the side benefit of making your site more usable for your visitors.
By the way, Bing (formally MSN and soon the combination of MSN and Yahoo!) says this “You can have great content and a plethora of high quality inbound links from authority sites, but if your site’s structure is flawed or broken, then it will still not achieve the optimal page rank you desire from search engines.”
I’m unaware that Google has said that so directly but they keep giving indications that they think the same way.
Have you seen breadcrumbs in Google results? Let me know and tell me what you think about it by leaving a comment below.
Google’s PubSubHubbub
Google has started letting people look at their new service PubSubHubbub.
It’s basically a faster and better way for getting and giving (or publishing and subscribing) RSS feeds; it makes it possible for instant RSS feed updates.
You can expect to see it show up in Google Reader, Google Alerts and other Google services. If Google was smart they’d add it to their Google search!
I know Friendfeed (which was acquired by Facebook a few weeks ago) is already supporting it.
If you aren’t using RSS feeds you REALLY should; see my post on my Social Media Domaination Machine.
It is still early but it is from Google so it is worth watching and, it is from Google, so published feeds may be indexed sooner and may get higher rankings. Something to think about!
Do you use RSS? Tell me how by leaving a comment.
Talk soon,
The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
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The Latest on Google and Facebook at http://bit.ly/HBkvz (via @DavidHusnian)
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