The big news yesterday was that Facebook announced its new company name - Meta. Yes, Facebook's company name is Meta. Like meta data, meta tag, and all the other metas that Google Search might have ranked prior. But when Facebook's announcement came out - the Google Search results adapted quickly to rank this breaking news.
I am not going to get into why Facebook renamed to Meta, you can the hundreds of articles on that on Techmeme. But as a search geek, it was impressive to see how quickly Google's search results picked up on the change and began ranking this news and content for Meta.
Google’s search results for [META] pic.twitter.com/DLd2HzOaol
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) October 28, 2021
That is a screen recording I took an hour or so after the announcement and the first organic result there is the Facebook announcement. Look at the results yourself for the keyword [meta].
Danny Sullivan had a earlier screen shot:
And our Google results figured out the new page for the search of [meta] pretty fast. pic.twitter.com/maz4SUx4Kp
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 28, 2021
This is what it looked like before:
Curious about how SERPs evolve?
— Shalom Goodman (@ShalomGood) October 28, 2021
Analyze as this page will evolve.
And quickly.
Facebook’s new name is called “Meta”. pic.twitter.com/c2enLAL6wC
I like the joke John Mueller made on the topic:
okay, not a new page, a FB joke, right? I wayback machined it :)
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) October 28, 2021
John added:
I wonder if this will throw off rankings & search results for all the SEO sites talking about meta tags now. Do you get a lot of "meta" traffic? This will keep the SEO & web-dev community busy for months.
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) October 28, 2021
In any event, I am sure SEOs are having a blast with this news.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
