Buried in yesterday's announcement of Facebook's new Graph Search feature was the mention of Bing web searches being included in some Graph Search results.
OK, I am sure you are asking why this is a big deal. After all, Facebook has been returning Bing web search results as part of their search feature for some time. My answer can be summed up in one word: Focus.
Facebook is clearly focusing on their Graph Search product. Sending out cryptic media invites and then rolling-out the company's top guns to make the announcement shows that they are committed to making this feature a success. The digital marketing world is clearly focusing on Graph Search. In fact, a recent quick Google News search for "'graph search' facebook" returned about 154,000 results....and the feature was announced less than 24 hours ago!
I must pause here and note that just because Facebook is focused on Graph Search, doesn't mean it will be successful. Dramatically changing the way 1 billion people use a particular product takes time and a whole lot of education. Of course, there is also that little privacy issue that may put up a few roadblocks along the way for Zuck & Co. Remember the Google "Search Plus Your World" privacy freak-out about a year ago?
That said, Facebook is focused on this new search feature, so at minimum, search will be somewhat more prominent on the network than it has been to date. This is where Bing comes in.
While Bing optimization should already be a basic component of most digital marketing plans, it is often overlooked. According to comScore, Bing had 16.3% of the 17.6 billion web searches in December which is too significant , in terms of activity and potential traffic), to ignore.
As I mentioned in the opening, Bing was specifically called out in Facebook's Graph Search announcement:
"As has been the case for some time, we may also make search suggestions in the search bar that then can trigger web searches. Web searches will display Bing results and Bing ads, similar to results on Bing.com."
Clearly being found in a Bing web search is important now and may increase in importance as Graph Search is rolled out to the masses. If you are not already optimizing your website(s) for Bing, you should make it part of your regular SEO routine.