Facebook Profiles in Organic Results

I knew that Facebook was beginning the process of showing up in search engine results. Today, while stumbling through search results for a client a ran across the Facebook Page I created for them. What blew my mind was that it was for a term that was listed only once on the page and through an application. Here is a quick screenshot:

The term was "job outlook in Orlando, fl" The landing page was the actual Facebook Page for the Orlando JobSpot.



It ranked 9th for that term. Pretty sweet I think. So I dugg deeper. (No pun intended)

So next I searched for my name. Pretty simple search. Here's the results:

I pulled my Facebook page number 7 in the Google searches. The landing page took you here:


Great for privacy, its the same as if someone searched for me within Facebook with the addition of some of my friends showing up for the party as well. I do not like the randomness that these friends appeared. In all honesty, I do not think that I have spoken to any of the 5 anytime recently. Maybe a system of top friends, a la Myspace, or even the most recent activity between friends, just a thought.

So my digging continued. I looked for Rock For Hunger. They have 2 Facebook Groups and one Facebook Page. Nothing in the first 7 pages for their name resulted in a Facebook listing. The groups and the Page have a great deal of member and incoming links, where the JobSpot Page has only 1 incoming link.

So far I have seen no relationship between incoming links, number of friends/fans and the organic rankings of these Facebook pages.

Mind you that I have only searched for local terms. So I decided to look for 'Stephen Colbert for President.' There group boasts over 1,000,000 members and has been linked to from blogs to large news networks. The first Facebook related search result:

Number 61 it is. Ouch and it is for an Application, not the group! Another interesting clue in the puzzle. In the first 100 results there were 3 Myspace related results. Facebook failed to return the group with over 1,000,000 users in the first 100 results. Hmm, Google spider problem or Facebook problem.

How is a Facebook Page spidered? What gives it the rains to show up on page 1? Is this just a test? I don't remember opting into anything to get my results listed. Will Facebook results show up as often as Myspace results for bands, brands and entertainment?

Thoughts anyone?

Greg Rollett