It’s impossible to concoct such a story.
There was a recent essay on ReadWriteWeb discussing Facebook’s desire to become the “One True Login.” According to the premise of the piece, it appears that Facebook is attempting to become a gateway to the rest of the Internet.
The item soon rose to the top of Google’s “News” results for “Facebook login.” As a result, people started clicking on the post in the hope of accessing Facebook. To voice their displeasure at being unable to log in, they began putting comments on the post.
How Did This Happen?
When individuals typed “Facebook login” into Google, they ended up to the ReadWriteWeb article. This is confirmed by a post from ReadWriteWeb Community Manager Jolie O’Dell.
The majority of Facebook users visit the site this way, according to reports. Google or a browser that automatically searches for anything other than a URL is used instead of typing a URL in the address bar of their browser. This avoids having to input the URL manually. In the past, clicking on this sent them to Facebook’s login page. However, after this piece was published on ReadWriteWeb, it quickly got to the top of Google’s search results for ‘Facebook logins.’ Until recently, (as of this writing), this was the case.
In the subsequent ReadWriteWeb comments, more knowledgeable readers mocked the naivete of these users. Many people found their confusion humorous. According to one commenter, “this thread of responses is the single most wonderful, tragicomic example of online idiocy I’ve ever been lucky to watch.”
It’s rather humorous at first to read the plight of these befuddled customers. As a result, one is left feeling very disappointed after reading dozens and hundreds of similar complaints from enraged Facebook users.
What Does This Mean?
Many of us have friends who are completely unfamiliar with the world wide web. In the past, I’ve heard people talk about Google as though it’s a unicorn-powered magical robot that gives you access to the Internet exclusively through its portal. They don’t think of the sites they go to after clicking on a search result as being independent of Google’s network. As a result, many people assume that Facebook is a part of Google.
Despite the fact that Google isn’t always able to answer their questions, Internet users keep coming back. Because they don’t know they can, they don’t look elsewhere.
Other engines have the ability to always improve. There is no denying that. But the real issue is getting people to stop using Google. Even Facebook, which has millions of members around the world, can’t convince people to come to its homepage to log in.
It’s easy to develop high-level thinking when you’re in the midst of optimizing websites or executing paid search ads. It’s a good time to realize just how web-savvy – or un-web-savvy – customers truly are.
The bottom line is that there are a number of internet users who rely upon Google to conduct searches on Google. This heavy reliance does not mean Google is authentic and shows us the best results. Facebook login fiasco is just an example.
