How Facebook's Community Pages are diluting brands.

We recently told you all about the new Community Pages on Facebook, created to bring together lots of content on general topics of interest, such as running, poker or interpretive joust. And while it's still hard to tell if users themselves are taking advantage of this new feature, it's safe to say that they're not too popular with people running official business pages.

First off, community pages create instant confusion when they share the same name as a brand that's already established on Facebook.

But more dangerously, these community pages are pushing real brand pages down (or even off) the all-important home page search results. Very often, community pages for brands take search prominence over official pages, but there are also many cases where the "real" page doesn't show up at all.

The good news? Each Community Page asks you to help improve it by suggesting the "Official Facebook Page," which is a pretty easy process — one you should definitely do on every applicable page if you're representing a brand. But it's unclear if this will really help the search prominence of brands or simply add more of your official content into the Community Page.

For now, these new pages are posing three pretty serious search dilemmas. They can be a bit tough to explain with words alone, so I wanted to walk you through a few visual examples. (if you're reading this via RSS, this is when you might want to click through to the blog post.)

Problem 1: Without recommended search terms (ie, "Did you mean...") built into Facebook's home page search bar, worthless community pages come out on top.

Example: Try searching for "JC Penney" and this is what you'll see:

Each of those is a Community Page created automatically by Facebook, despite the fact the official page has 824,000 fans.

What's the problem? The brand actually spells its name "JCPenney," which is exactly what you're offered in Facebook search — but only if you click to "See more results..." Even then (unlike Google), Facebook continues to offer you the wrong pages until you click through to the alternate spelling.

Click on the "Did you mean" option, and you'll finally get to the real JC juggernaut:

Sure, this is a problem that was probably already a thorn in JC Penney JCPenney's side, but the advent of Community Pages has really made it worse by offering people lots of incorrect links. Imagine if Google served you up five or six unused Wikis as the top results when you searched for "JC Penney." 

How to fix it: Facebook needs to incorporate its recommended search alternatives into the home page search bar instead of just placing them "after the jump" in the (often unnoticed) full search results. This change would be a huge boon to brands whose names aren't easily spelled to begin with, like Schlotzsky's or Volkswagen.

Problem 2: Facebook search sometimes gives preferential treatment to Community Pages.

You'd think the most popular page would win top billing on most home page searches, but you'd be wrong. In the screenshot below, you can see that GameStop's official page (with its 21,000 fans) plays second fiddle to the GameStop Community Page (with just 1,800 users):

How to fix it: A simple weighting system should keep the most popular pages or groups on top of home page search results. Or, if Facebook must give preferential treatment, it seems the preference should go to the brands (unless Facebook expects Community Pages to start buying ads any time soon).

Problem 3: A lot of official pages simply aren't showing up in search.

This one's a real head-scratcher. While most brand-name searches in the home page come up just fine, some simply don't show up at all. Here are a few I found in just a few minutes of tests:

Tool company DeWalt doesn't get any love for its well-run brand page, which has 6,500 fans. Instead, a basic Facebook search returns only the Community Page:

Same is true for fish-frying favorite Captain D's, whose official page has 6,000 users but makes no appearance in the home page search results:

How to Fix It: Page admins might actually be able to help themselves out a bit on this one. A little old-school Search Engine Optimization might beef up the search results for both of the examples above.

Specifically, DeWalt hasn't claimed the custom URL Facebook.com/DeWalt yet, which could help improve results when searching for its name. Also, neither company explicitly says its name in the info box at the left side of each Facebook page. That's one of the few spots you have for permanent customized text, so be sure to use it, people.

So now that we've had a few weeks to see Community Pages take shape, what do you think? Have you seen any real benefit? Conversely, have they posed any problems (search-related or otherwise) for your business? We'd love to hear about it in the comments.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Comments

[Carri Bugbee]

David, this is a very helpful post. One has to wonder what FB was thinking of when they decided to create the community pages. It seemed like they wanted to emulate Wikipedia within a walled garden, even saying they would source Wikipedia for content. But what's the point of that beyond creating more content within FB? It's not like FB needs additional content or we need a new kind of Wikipedia.

Search within FB has always been one of its weakest links and it looks like Community pages has exposed that and created a lot of confusion in the process.

Moreover, given Zuckerberg's storied past, one has to wonder if he might not do the same thing to "partner" Wikipedia as he's done to many previous partners and eventually say that content that was originally sourced via Wikipedia is now "owned" by FB since it was user-generated anyway.

If you're unfamiliar with that aspect of FB's history, you should definitely read the recent post about Zuckerberg's questionable ethics from Jason Calacanis: http://bit.ly/9qTtrs

@CarriBugbee
Social Profiles: www.CarriBugbee.com

[Carol Schiller]

David,

Thanks for another excellent post. Community Pages just highlight what has been a major problem with Facebook all along: their search function stinks.

Although FB remains an excellent tool for business, it will come as a welcome relief if/when they finally fix this shortcoming.

Carol
@carolschiller
@cozifamily

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Yeah ... Facebook is a minefield right now for brands. I got tired of the games and the spam and all the horse puckee and deleted my account. It's just not worth my time.

[Diane Court]

Really helpful post, David. What a headache Community pages create for brand monitoring and measuring-not just one official page, but 2 or more, mispellings and all.

[David Griner]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I'm definitely not jonesing to criticize Facebook, whose team has always been a pleasure to work with. And I can see some potential benefit of Community Pages for wide-ranging topics that aren't tied to a brand.

But I think Facebook missed a chance to improve Groups by giving them the ability to push updates out to news streams. Instead, the Community Pages duplicate content in a largely unmoderated way.

Thankfully, I'm guessing that these duplicate and brand-diluting Community Pages will slowly get ironed out. But Facebook should still pursue improvements in its home-page search function.

[Allan]

Great post David! Any suggestions on how what Admins of official brand pages can do?

[David Griner]

Allan, just be sure to put the link to your official brand page at the "Official Facebook Page" link on each related Community Page.

Also, make sure to mention the full name of your organization in the info box on the left-side rail of your Page. That seems to help with the SEO.

[Lindsay Fultz]

Thank you for the great tips! Very helpful! I've already started working on your community page suggestions/seo suggestions.

[Jim]

Thanks David. This has been a real headbanger as of late. We have been holding off inaugurating many of the brands we manage for a few months now and this whole fiasco has forced is to rush them out. It's hard to be a part of conversations when you can't find them developing on these unofficial pages.

[Kalyn Baldwin]

David,

I have to agree with you on this one. As a marketer, working as a Community Manager for both the agency I work for and clients with social media needs, the Community Pages tend to discredit everything we are working towards which is for fans to recognize our client's official page on Facebook in order to receive the correct information about their brand. It appeared to be going in the right direction when groups became less prominent and Fan Pages came into the mix, but now it feels as though we are taking one step forward and two steps back. Another good piece of advice for brands on Facebook: To ensure individuals are finding your official page, incorporate a Facebook button on your Web site that links your customers directly back to the official Facebook page of your brand or product. This may help to eliminate some confusion.

Kalyn Baldwin
@gcgmarketing
www.gcgmarketing.com