The American Legion W.R.I.T.E.S

The American Legion Western Region Information & Technology Exchange Service.

This is a site is devoted to the free and open exchange of ideas and applications of pertinent information and technology to The American Legion.


Saturday, January 30, 2010

Social Networks and Search Engines

This is not an article about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Rather, it is about the basics of what search engines will find, and what you need to do to make it possible. Beyond search engines, the article covers social bookmarking sites, and how they can help your organization be found on the Internet.

Facebook

What a search engine can see depends on the privacy settings for the Facebook account. In regards to search engines, you need to mouse over Settings, click on Privacy Settings, and the click on Search. The Facebook Search Results should be set to Everyone, and you need to allow Public Search Results. Most of the setting under Profile Information do not apply to an organization. You may wish to change Comments on Post to Everyone.

Here is what search engines will find:
  • Notes posted by you
  • Groups that you create
  • Fan pages that you create
One SEO bit of advice, search engines are more likely to discover your pages, if you have a user name. Facebook will allow you to create a user name if you provide a cell phone number for verification, or have 100 friends or fans.

Twitter

By default, your Twitter account will be found by search engines. If it is not, you need to verify that the Protect my tweets is not checked in account settings. Google, and other search engines, will find your account but not individual tweets. Individual tweets can be searched using tweetmeme.com or topsy.com.

When you see a tweet with a hash mark in front of a words. The tweet is flagging those words as key words for tweet search engines. This is an SEO trick to direct traffic to the account (channel in twittereze) making those tweets.

MySpace

When you create your MySpace account, make sure that you create a user name. Your account will then be http://www.myspace.com/username. Since their are no groups or fan pages in MySpace, search engines can only find your user profile. Through the privacy settings, you control what is visible to the public.

Social Bookmarking

The world of social networking includes sited devoted to social bookmarking. With variations, these sites share your favorite sites to the public and to your bookmarking-service friends. It really helps if you have a user name for both Facebook and MySpace. You also need a bit.ly account to shorten the long URLs, especially those for Facebook groups and fan pages. The most popular social bookmarking services are:
  • Delicious (delicious.com) is a true social bookmarking site. Be careful not to upload all your bookmarks.
  • Digg (digg.com) is a social bookmarking site oriented towards news, images, and videos. The popularity is measured by the number of diggs a URL receives.
  • StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com) is a site where you tag a URL with either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. You have to experience StumbleUpon to understand it.
Social Media Search Engines

A social media search engine is different than a regular search engine, in that its focus is on searching and indexing social networking (social media) sites. The major players are:
  • OneRiot (www.oneriot.com) bills itself as a search engine for the realtime Web. It heavly leans on Twitter and Digg.
  • TweetMeme (tweetmeme.com) a search engine for Twitter.
  • Topsy (topsy.com) has an interesting twist on indexing tweets. For example, you can list tweets that referency YouTube.
  • WhosTalkin (www.whostalkin.com) is a social media search engine that searches over 60 social media sites (including blog sites) for information on a particular topic. As with any search engine, it can only find those item that are available to the public (everyone).
The world is listening. It may take time, but search engines are tracking public profiles, FaceBook groups, Facebook fan pages, blogs (notes), and tweets. Being found requires be active. Just like Web pages, social networking requires ongoing activity.
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