A relatively major announcement came out at the end of today's Google Search Event - Marissa Mayer announced that Google will receive real-time access from Facebook Fan Page updates:
“Facebook will be providing us with a feed of updates from public profile pages, also known as Facebook pages,” says Mayer (more on TechCrunch).
This is a significant move for:
- Google, who receives unique and valuable real-time content... that is tied to branded search terms - Brands, who should see increased traffic to their fan pages... and consequently be able to attract larger audiences (ie 'fans') - Facebook, who should see an increase in their SEO traffic much like the vanity URLs they recently introduced
For brands and marketers, this means that Facebook updates should be crafted in ways that are conscious of consumers both on-Facebook (ie their fans) and off-Facebook (conducting searches on Google).... just as they do while crafting blog titles, Twitter posts, and so forth.
It is also worth noting that this is a continued SEO effort by Facebook: vanity URLs, widgets, badges, etc. Certainly there are other compelling reasons (product, strategy, etc) behind these products... but SEO must be one of them!