Social Search Optimization (SSO)
by Sourish Ghosh, December, 2009

Part 1: Introduction

1. At a high level Social Search optimization is the process of understanding how a social search engine works and how can your site be optimized to gain high ranking in a social search environment.

2. With the feeding of Twitter content into Google and Bing - it has made the search algorithm pick up another parameter to rank a site against the social content.

3. With the addition of facebook and myspace content will make this attribute even stronger in the ranking algorithm.

4. There will be a significant shift and results coming back - since it won't be just page ranks it will have another aspect now - people - people's relationships - context of what is happening NOW.

5. Just like video search was a game changer in 2008 - so will SSO be a game changer in 2010 and 2011.

6. Just like Amazon shot up with its power of "people suggesting about products and reviews" - imagine that applied across all content on the internet - it has far reaching implications for all web seo and webmasters.

7. There could be a possibility of having fewer clicks from Search Engines to a specific site - if the search results themselves bring back enough relevant content - real time - social based that by reading that content one is satisfied - why would they click further onto a site - something that we are watching as it evolves in the next year.

8. More and more folks who are online and have websites are spending more dollars each day on SEO and soon SSO a subcomponent of the overall SEO strategy at a company will be gaining a bigger piece of the pie.

9. It would be those sites who stand to gain with this wave of the 'NOW' that will leap ahead of the others who are still focused on just the traditional SEO work.

10. We at F9 Systems plan to help our clients with Social Search Optimization as it evolves and through the different methods and processes that start becoming clear. We will do the hard work for you - simply contact us with your site SEO needs.

Part 2: Social Search SSO and Real Time Search

1. Google is now starting to display results from live Twitter tweets into its main search results page.

2. With this they are bringing results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web.

3. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before.

4. One of the key features in this is discover breaking news the moment it's happening.

5. With this one can imagine how Google indexing is working as they scan live data and manage and monitor
billions of documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day.

6. As social sites like Twitter and Facebook have live information fed from the user base finding breaking news or any type of social information as it happens across the web is going to be an interesting change in the search landscape.

7. Does this mean if your site does not have real time news you won't get ranked - not true. But if you were a news website and most of your visitors found or came to your site via a search then there could be possibility that if someone else is ahead in the Social Search optimization area then that user may end up on that other site for a quick update via the Tweeter message indexed and displayed via Google Search.

8. More in upcoming parts to this series of articles..by Sourish Ghosh..

Image of social search optimization real time search

About the Author:
Sourish is an Information Systems Manager at F9 Systems. His primary focus is design and development of Online technology solutions. He believes that Search Intelligence will become a primary driving force for Online Business Intelligence. Sourish has participated in numerous consulting projects over the past six years. He manages a team of Engineers and Data Analyst at F9 Systems to delivery world class Online Business web projects with high ROI. He has also published articles on PHP Programming, Drupal and other technologies, in various online magazines and with other consultants and is a frequent writer on Search and related technologies. He can be reached at sourish@f9systems.com