Optimizing Bing/Facebook Integration

If you missed it last Wednesday, Microsoft and Facebook got together and did a press conference, announcing that Bing will become more integrated with Facebook.

In short, Bing will provide search results using your Facebook friends to determine relevancy.

That is, when more of your Facebook friends "like" something, that something will rank better, and be more prominently displayed on Bing's search results.

But Microsoft also pointed out that this friend-based relevancy is optional. By default, it will be turned off. But you can simply click a button to turn it on.

So how do we publishers respond to that?...

Well, if you want to get more traffic from Bing, add more Facebook "Like" buttons on your website. Facebook has a page describing its social plugins:
http://developers.facebook.com/plugins

You'll want to add a Like button that references each page of your website, as well as a Like button that references your website as a whole.

You'll also want to promote your content, products, and services on Facebook, and personally click on the "Like" button on every single item you post.

I imagine some bloggers will go so far as to beg their readers to click the Like button. They'll be like Jerry Lewis, "Our goal is 100 likes, come on and click that button people, we're gonna be here all night long!"

You can sense the "Like" becoming a commodity. You can also imagine people threatening to unlike something to lower your rankings.

As it is right now, Bing drives only a fraction of traffic compared to Google. But it appears that Facebook and Microsoft are strengthening their relationship even further. And as Facebook has now replaced Google as the top trafficked property, one can only guess how far Bing will ride on its coattails.  ✓