When Facebook launched its new geosocial check-in service one week ago, I was convinced it was going to blow its stand-alone competitors completely out of the water simply because it lives where the vast majority of social networking addicts already spend large chunks of time. That would make it hugely accessible and convenient – no need to leave Facebook to broadcast your location such as is necessary with Foursquare or Gowalla. Why go out of your way when it was already right there?

As an SEO, I was excited about it. Check-ins provide another avenue of brand exposure for my clients, and Facebook was telling business owners to claim their profiles. We scouted out the process for our clients by claiming our own company profile.  Now, a mere week after Facebook Places was launched, I am ready to predict that it is doomed to fail without some fairly major adjustments. Here’s why.

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If you are a Droid user like many of us here at the SEO team, take the time to put down your new Froyo OS and read our link love. And then comment. And then return to your Droid.

John’s Link:
This week I really was interested in Rand’s I’m Getting More Worried About the Effectiveness of Webspam. This is a topic that is thrown around a lot by our clients who are trying to get the best rankings, but without caring about the consequences.  It’s frustrating to explain to those outside of SEO that Google will come down hard on these web spammers, even though for the time being they are in that #1 organic spot. Google, please  back up your guidelines and the information that you repeatedly feed us, even though you forget to follow through.

Becky’s Link:
What are the implications for SMBS of Google Integrated Local Search Result Tests?
As soon as news of Google’s integrated local search tests hit the blogs, we were asking ourselves what it would all mean for SEO. Mike at Blumenthal’s has a lot of great thoughts on the subject.

Patti’s Link:
Oh, I got a great chuckle out of this one: Foursquare Experiences Record Signups After Launch of Facebook Places. A lot of folks were speculating what may happen to Foursquare with the official launch of Facebook Places. Would Facebook kill Foursquare? Clearly, that is not the case. Another win for Foursquare.

I find myself wondering how the heck I made it to Friday again so quickly. Is it just me, or is July moving at the speed of light?

Either way, it’s time for some link lovin’s for our favorite SEO writers this week!

Patti: There’s another startup on the horizon, and this one comes with FREE DATA! I, like our former ninja Tara, love data, especially when it’s free. Blekko is a search engine currently sitting in beta which promises to share it’s data for free, including inbound links, duplicated content, and associated metatags, for each and every domain they have indexed! Provided their index is comparable to that of Yahoo! or Google, this will be a great tool for SEO! Swoon

Becky: Last January, I got very interested in Foursquare and after poking it with a stick for awhile I wrote SEO for Foursquare. I was pretty excited about the possible implications for local search, and wrote that, “The clean, clear address and map hint that a citation is certainly possible. If a lot of people are checking in to a venue, those could be construed as votes in favor that make it more worthy of a higher position in the 7-pack. At the very least, the search engines are taking some serious notice.” So of course I was excited all over again when Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land posted Foursquare In Discussions With “Everyone” To Enhance Search With Its Data. Can I get away with saying I told you so? Cuz I kinda want to.