Google’s Buzz about
Monday, March 1st, 2010Erick Schonfeld gives three reasons why Google Buzz was launched before its time – but really they are reasons to launch at all. The final reason is the key:
… The other reason Google needed to establish its own social stream pronto is that links passed through social sharing are beginning to rival search as a primary driver of traffic for many sites. Part of Google’s prowess stems from the fact that it is the largest referrer of traffic to many other Websites. It doesn’t want to lose that status to social sharing streams such as Facebook or Twitter. Already, Buzz is helping to boost sharing through Google Reader. While Google doesn’t benefit directly from that traffic (yet), simply knowing what links people are sharing and clicking on is valuable data which can help it improve its search results.
We have seen this effect for awhile now – as have our customers. More and more of the traffic to our site is not generated through search engines specifically. To be sure, we certainly get a chunk from them, but solid leads are far better from our social media activities than from paid search. That trend is only becoming more pronounced. Social media directly undermines Google’s relevance (course I don’t see anyone else directly profiting from that change…).