Why Facebook Should Introduce Paid Searches

Type in something in the search box on your Facebook homepage and hit return. You'll get a list of possible results on Facebook (people, pages, groups and so on) and someway down the page, results from Bing, Microsoft's search engine.

I used their search a couple of times whenever I've had to research a brand's social activities, to see how and what they're doing. The trouble is that both popular and not as well known brands or personalities might have multiple pages and groups dedicated to them. So if I'm a fan of a show or a team and I want to receive updates or participate in contests to win free stuff, I'll have to go through a bunch of them to see which one is official.
Hardcore committed pages moderated by fans here are a pain in this case because even though it might be updated frequently and have a lot of extras in the form of fan art and fan fiction, the information is not being relayed first hand. Official pages which do nothing but only push out information like a publishing feed are no good either, they're missing the point of being on a social networking site.

Similarly, if your name is fairly common but your profile picture is not clear and most of your profile is restricted to friends, it's a pain for people to find you because they'll have to go through a bunch of profiles to figure out which one is yours and add you.

Facebook Ads already help brands promote their pages and sites to users who are a part of the demographic they've targeted. It helps them seek out users who might be fans or simply interested.

What if a user actively seeks out a brand and has to sift through the clutter of pages, groups and people (brand mascots)?
This is where paid searches comes in. Brands should be able to push their official pages to the top of the Facebook's onsite search results. If I search for say, Kenny Powers, the top result should be the official Eastbound & Down fan page. Below that could be a fan generated Kenny Powers Quotes fan page which would bring you the great man's quotes if the official page isn't doing it already. Which they would be doing if they read their Facebook Insights report properly every week.

 So if you want to know more about that little known band you saw live last week, it'll help you search for their official page or group to join. You could hunt for more bargains in your locality or other bands you may not have heard of which make the make kind of music you like.

It would help brands and social organizations with valuable RoI since there is no Facebook equivalent of Twitter's Verified Account badge to lend their page that credibility. Competing brands could take advantages of keywords to gain exposure, this would also separate the bargain hunters from loyalists right at the beginning depending on the keywords they used to get to your page allowing you a deeper targeting option.

Finally it would help Facebook's search feature if the results they fetched were more relevant. It gives them an option to offer businesses who may feel the budget at their disposal cannot sustain an ad campaign but who can boost their RoI by being smart and practical with their keywords and scheduling. To keep businesses with deep pockets from monopolizing the keywords, Facebook could restrict number of keywords they're allowed to bid for.

It's not just a win-win situation, it's a three-way of win-win situations. We all know how awesome three-ways are, hence this is something Facebook should jump in to right away.

PS: I haven't researched to see if Facebook has something similar in the pipes so please leave a link if you've read  this somewhere else earlier. Feedback is sought and will be appreciated.

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