Check this out! Facebook is not consistently ranking #1 for the navigational search “Facebook” on Google. While it’s not happening on every Google data center, I’m sure that based on past posts, Danny Sullivan might find this interesting and worth monitoring.
So this could mean one of a few things are the culprit here…
1. Barack Obama Google Link Bomb – While it doesn’t rank #1, the fact that there is an indent entry after the Barack Obama entry is an indication that Google is seeing that page as important or having a link spike. Recently, Barack Obama had also recently been ranking highly for the term “Linkedin” so it appears that the Obama campaign is trying to utilize search engine optimization techniques on social media sites to compete with John McCain and Sarah Palin.
2. The www.new.facebook.com pages when mixed with old Facebook pages is confusing the Googlebot? – It wouldn’t be out of the question. It could be that it looks like a regular domain and a subdomain.
3. Other parts of Facebook are being opened up to search and these pages are causing issues somehow – several sites reported this. Facebook’s continuing inconsistently about what is public and not public to search is frustrating and is inviting an unnecessary future firestorm. They should really be more clear and communicative, have they forgot the previous lessons of the past?
4. None of the above – What is your theory?
While I’m at it – Dear Facebook – you have not solved the problem I submitted in August to your help desk. After waiting a week you sent me a message which did not even address the issue or indicate that a human has read it. I’d appreciate professional resolution of this request.