Facebook graph search released
Facebook has announced today that it is launching a new product called 'Facebook Graph Search'. The Search engine relies heavily on 'Likes' and other Facebook factors to show the most relevant search results for what the user is searching for (sound familiar?).
In addition is includes many search filters based on the huge amounts of data that Facebook has access to.
Graph Search and web search are very different. Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: "hip hop") and provide the best possible results that match those keywords. With Graph Search you combine phrases (for example: "my friends in New York who like Jay-Z") to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that's been shared on Facebook. We believe they have very different uses.
At this stage the system will only include people, photos, places and interests - other items such as song listens and game plays are also in the works.
Search results will be personalised to a certain extent (like Google), but overall, results will be fairly similar for most users. Users will only be able to search information that was previously shared with you, keeping intact Facebook's privacy settings.
If you want to give it a go, you will have to wait, but make sure you get on a waiting list right away.
James Richardson
Co-Founder
James Richardson is one of the co-founders of Optimising, that he started in 2008. He's spent nearly two decades helping Australian brands get found online, from technical SEO and platform migrations through to AI search.
Outside work, he's usually on the basketball court or golf course or being comprehensively outsmarted by his three daughters.
