Facebook has a lot of potential for local search.  Its massive and active user base performs 1.5 billion searches a day.  But are users finding local businesses using FB Search?

FB certainly has been vocal about the number of advertisers and active SMB Facebook Pages on its platform and plenty of people check in at restaurants or stores and post reviews.  FB also has unique data on its users – what they view, like, post, share and where they check in – all of which should provide unmatched targeting capability for ads.

However, local search is still the top way in which businesses get found by consumers, and with more consumers performing searches on the go from their phones, location is one of the most critical pieces of information that consumers need.

Facebook needs to do a better job leveraging location information and returning relevant search results in its “Places” tab in order to compete with the search experience that consumers have with search engines like Google when they look for local businesses.

Check out my analysis on Search Engine Land of 6 challenges FB Search needs to overcome in order to fully take advantage of the potential it possesses in local search.

You should also be aware of these shortcomings as you help your client manage their social media page as part of a broader marketing strategy.  It may be that FB is effective now at outreach to existing customers who like or follow you on FB but is somewhat limited as an organic tool to being found by new customers.  Let me know whether you experience the same limitations as I found in my research.