Bing to Index Facebook Data

Last week, Microsoft Bing (search engine) and Facebook announced a partnereship that will give search results a social media flavor. This new partnership will allow people who use Facebook to see Bing search results that incorporate information from their friends.  Bing will now be able to search your friends (likes/dislikes) and deliver you a more custom search result. This will also help you find people (using facebook data) as well as recommendations on products and services.

This could be good or bad. Good if you want a more personalized social media result. Bad is you want to be found or your personal Facebook information out in the public domain.

This new social search integration has numerous SEO opportunities for small and large businesses. This integration can also be a good tool in reputation management. Bottom line: This deal symbolized the importance of social media in search results. This is just a first step, in the future most all social media platforms (data) will be indexed by some or all of the search engines. That's why online marketing tools such as corporate twitter accounts, Facebook fan pages, etc., will become a crucial part of any online marketing strategy.