Over the past couple of years, a lot of people in the media, such as Robert Huf, staff writer for Forbes magazine, have been suggesting that despite the current power and reach of Google, it might be vulnerable to a certain unique feature found in Facebook, and that is, word of mouth. The thinking is that a large percentage of Google searches are done by people looking for information on something such as where to eat dinner, or what Smartphone to buy. Such decisions, they say, might be better based on information given to them by friends or acquaintances such as say, those on Facebook. Not so says Pew Research, which has just completed a very large survey of computer users on this very thing.
Turns out, at least for now, it’s not really even a close race. Pew’s studies show that when computer users are asked where they go to find information about shopping, restaurants, bars, or clubs, thirty eight percent say Google, seventeen percent say other topic specific sites, and a measly three percent cite social networks including Facebook and Twitter.
These findings, Huf suggests indicate that it’s going to take some serious mountain moving for people to move their through processes from Google to their friends, if it ever occurs at all. It’s possible after all, that people don’t really take advice from friends all that seriously, or it’s also possible that because Google can offer the advice of many in an quick organized fashion, that polling friends seems rather moot.
On the other hand, as many others have pointed out, there is nothing stopping Facebook from including a search engine that people could use while inside of their account, doing away with the need to jump away to look something up when say, making plans with friends on where to go out for an evening of fun. Of course, Facebook would have a pretty steep hill to climb, as Yahoo and Bing have been finding out for several years now.
There’s also the nagging problem of Google+ swiping away users from Facebook. Clearly, it hasn’t been the giant killer thus far, but it’s holding its own and doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. It might even grow in usage as it has one very real advantage, and that is a platform on the Google search page to make it easy to move between searching and socializing, something that might be the ultimate decider in the end.