Michael Arrington at TechCrunch reported yesterday that Facebook is now twice the size of MySpace worldwide, measured by monthly unique visitors. MySpace is still #1 in the U.S., but extrapolating the traffic data predicts that Facebook will overtake it sometime later this year.  Facebook’s registered users has been growing explosively.

However, MySpace users also used their social network much more intensively.  According to socialmedia blog, MySpace users spent 17.5 billion minutes online compared with 9.3 billion minutes for Facebook, generating 40 billion pageviews compared with Facebook’s 18 billion.

Anyway you look at it, these are staggering numbers.  MySpace claims it is succeeding in monetizing this traffic, while Facebook continues to push for user growth.  For me, the more interesting thing is how these giants will push my world around.  We already know that social media generate the huge buzz we depend on for ‘viral’ marketing with content syndication and links between publishers (see the two above?).  But how is that going to affect the core function of search in the online world?

I don’t think Google is worried.  But search functions can become a lot more specialized.  Think about looking for real time insights into a developing event:  wouldn’t you search Twitter?

Owners of local small businesses now use the Internet more than any other source to find other businesses.  Yet only 44% of these owners actually have a website.  This gap is one of the main findings of new research from Webvisible and Nielsen , and reported as the ‘great divide‘ in the Marketing Vox post.

The research confirms that the Internet is increasingly the way people find local information.  82% of respondents in this study use search engines for local info compared with 57% who use Yellow Pages directories.  50% actually use the search engines first, compared with only 24% who turn to the YPs first.  A large majority of the searchers were satisfied with the online search experience even though they often had difficulty finding a specific business they were looking for.

Reading between the lines, this suggests that they found at least a similar business online, and perhaps used that instead of the one they were looking for in the first place.  As the Internet replaces other sources of local information, it will be ever more important for local businesses to have websites and to promote them.  That’s where their competition is.

Does it make sense to you that Google, et al, would like to rank search results based on what visitors think is relevant?  In other words, respond to your search query with results that other people have liked?  It sure makes sense to me — and now Ian Lurie has another common sense post about how user behavior can affect search results.  This has been a hobbyhorse of mine for some time, at least since reading John Battelle’s Search.  Remember from that book that he talked about how Google could measure the entire clickstream — the database of intentions.  With all that computing power plus a bunch of the smartest analysts in the known universe, how could Google not want to measure the way you use a site:  do you click on the link?  do you stay awhile on that site?  do you click through to other pages?  do you bookmark it?  Sites that attract this kind of use for a query are relevant sites.  This is important to get, and Lurie’s post tells you why:  when Google can measure how you interact with a site you find in a search query result, the importance of the quality of the site’s content, navigation, and usability are magnified.  It’s back to basics, folks:  authoritative content and excellent usability — and these are now core requirements of SEO.

In case you have been missing it, Google publishes the Zeitgeist to highlight the trends in search for that year. This year, the Zeitgeist includes search trends for a bunch of foreign countries.  In case you were wondering, ‘sarah palin’ is the number 1 fastest rising search term worldwide; ‘obama’ is #6.  John McCain got shut out of that elite list, but he’s high on the U.S. only list as a consolation.  Of course, these lists are formed from Google search network data, so they are not comprehensive — but in the U.S. at least it’s still pretty good:  Google was where 72% of search queries began in November in the U.S.  Dominance.

Everyone likes a tidy little factoid to make a bigger point.  The folks at ITBusiness share this one:  for the average website, 61% of traffic originates in natural (organic) search.  41% of traffic is from Google alone.  So:  SEO is the place to start.  ’Nuff said.

Howard Dean made a splash with web-based fundraising four years ago, but this election was astounding for Obama’s use of the Internet for organizing at the grass(net)roots. I am sure the pundits are all correct that politics has changed permanently because of this — we’ll see more and more effort devoted to netizens in the future.  Here’s a couple interesting articles on the phenomenon. First, a review of search queries as political election predictors:  using Google’s Insight, Aaron Goldman matches up queries as predictions against the actual outcomes of the election.  Next, see Christine Beardsell’s nice article on the explosion in the use of video in the recent election, including some very influential user generated content (remember will.i.am’s ‘yes we can’ video?).  Christine argues that the Internet by its nature will demand more transparency and honesty from candidates:  do you agree?

Syndicating content you make to other blogs and websites is a good thing, especially if you get inbound links and traffic from it (which is one of your purposes). But it also creates duplicate content issues, forcing the search engines to determine which content source is the original one that deserves the better rank for the content. What is the smart thing to do?

Vanessa Fox started a string on ranking on syndicated content last May. She offers several ideas for how to boost your original content, the most important of which is to include an absolute link back to your original content in anything you syndicate to others.  Yet, Google et al might still consider the syndicated use of the content as a higher ranking because the website or blog it is on is considered more authoritative.  The search engines will still try to eliminate duplicate content, and your original work might be the version that gets eliminated.

A hyperactive version of this problem is when your content gets scraped and re-used on somebody else’s website (a client of mine produces the best event calendar in our county and it is repeatedly “borrowed” by scrapers).  How can we ensure that we get credit for our good work?

I don’t think there’s a 100% solution to this.  However, Google’s Webmaster Blog assures us that they “look at various signals to determine which site is the original one”.  Adding the inbound links to your site will always help, obviously, but beyond that you need to persist in keeping your content clean (limit the duplicate content that is unnecessary) and identify the files you want search engines to see in your Sitemap XML submission.  You do not want to give up the benefits of syndication, and you cannot stop scrapers — you can only make sure your content is fresh, well-formulated technically, and syndicated to people who will play fair with you in giving credit for your content.

Google is adding to your choices in browsers. Comic fans can get a great intro to the power of this beast in this story about the development and  Beta launch of Chrome. Given Google’s close support for Firefox, I’m not sure why they want/need a browser of their own, but it will be an open source project, like Firefox, initially just for PCs and later for Mac. You can download it to your PC if you want. I will try it, won’t you?

Search Engine Land talks up a recent change in Google search results that highlights synonyms — type ‘running’ and you might get ‘jogging’ as a highlighted result.  Check it out in your own searches.

Ad position is important — higher on the first search result page translates into more clicks (not always more sales!). Google’s Quality Score for your ad is one factor that determines position. It is based on the keyword match between query and ad, your maximum CPC bid, and the quality of your landing page.

Now Google is updating how the Quality Score is calculated. The Score will be calculated dynamically. Instead of a minimum CPC, you will be shown the estimated bid price for a first page ad position. And, the system will no longer mark some keywords as unavailable to an advertiser based on a past Quality Score. See the details in Google’s blog post on Quality Score Improvements.