Right to Reply: Comparing Facebook and Search Engine Visits is Flawed

The news that Social networking sites with Facebook leading the roost, have overtaken Search Engines for the first time in terms of the number of UK visits each receives isn’t as significant as it might immediately appear as the comparison is conceptually flawed.

Comparing Facebook usage for example, to Search Engine usage, and then saying that traffic to the likes of Facebook has exceeded that of the search engines, suggests that this is some kind of seminal moment, when in fact it simply reflects the fact that Facebook and kin are very popular and increasingly important for marketers, but does nothing to inform our appreciation of the two mediums.

Essentially, comparing social networking and search engines on the basis of visits alone suggests that people choose one over the other and that isn’t true – it’s like comparing the number of people that use search engines to the number of people that walk down the high street on their way to work - they are qualitatively different.

Search engine usage is the proactive and decisive pursuit of information and content that will often lead to a consumer transaction. Social media and Facebook represents the creation and affirmation of that content.

So comparing content to the means of acquiring it gives us no useful conclusion. A better piece of research would look at the influence of each on buying decisions and brand awareness as that would celebrate the meritorious differences of each and not assume they are the same.

To illustrate, people are typically in two different modes – ‘search mode’ or ‘social mode’:

Search Mode

This is where online users are looking for something specific, be it information on the side effects of a drug or a new sofa. They are very close to the point of transacting, have conviction in their requirements, and will demonstrate a very clear start and end to their activity. When people are in search mode there is no medium more suited to their requirements than a search engine, as it provides them with expansive access to all the sites on the Internet and all the tools they need to satisfy their search. This may even take them to a social networking site to satisfy their requirements. Search Mode is PROACTIVE. Offline equivalent activities would be going into a store, using a catalogue, the Yellow Pages, going to the library, calling directory enquiries.

Social Mode

This is where online users are looking to interact with their sphere of friends, peers, or colleagues. They are not necessarily looking for anything in particular and their activities are largely dictated by what members of their sphere want to share with them, and vice versa. Brands also engage in this space, with the discourse again largely dictated by what their sphere find interesting, amusing, or important. Social Mode implies the consumption and sharing of information, not the seeking out of it. Social Mode is therefore PASSIVE. Offline equivalent activities would be discussing a new purchase with friends, sharing news about something that interests you, demonstrating status through brand association, watching a TV ad, organising events, sharing experiences.

Given the nature of these ‘modes’ it isn’t valid to compare a search engine visit with a Facebook visit. A search engine visit is quite likely to result in a monetary transaction, a Facebook visit may just be someone looking at a post on their wall and a million miles away from a conversion. A search engine visit is brand engagement every single time, a Facebook visit isn’t. A search engine visit has a distinct commercial or informational purpose, a Facebook visit does not.

What is true however is that Google and Facebook are indeed competitors in that both want to deliver on both the search and social modal requirements of online users. But comparing visits doesn’t conclude anything at all about how this is actually playing out. The only conclusion to draw is that search and social are both incredibly important for people and marketers and that engaging with them both is critical, but that engagement needs to be different as it needs to reflect their relative value in driving acquisitions, brand loyalty, brand awareness, and word of mouth – they are not the same.

By Andreas Pouros

COO

Greenlight

www.greenlightsearch.com

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