I-Search #149

Facebook Search Engine

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                    I-Search Discussion List
            "Social Search Marketing and Technology"
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Disa Johnson                                        Search Return
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January 15, 2013                                    I-Search #149
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             "Facebook Graph Search"
                         ~ I-Search


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==> Facebook Search Engine

From: I-Search <>

Facebook announced today what some, including I-Search, predicted 
would be a social search engine. People predicted other things 
like car integration, improved gaming and gifts, to a wholly 
Facebook branded phone. Really? It was search that won the day. 
There might be some things Facebook left on the table, however it 
is clearly a powerful step to try and disrupt search. For now, 
it only consists of a series of filters and keyword search.

https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch

The Facebook Graph Search is a social search product that is 
limited to what you can get from Facebook itself. That means it 
is both a fix for the notoriously terrible pre-existing Facebook 
search experience and it can reach out to more of the data from 
your whole Facebook Social Graph, including Web page shares. That 
makes it just a glorified site search. The power is the data.

The irony in the newly minted "Facebook Graph Search," against a 
backdrop of Google Web search is the notion of them selling it as 
a search engine that respects privacy. Totally off the mark. It's 
better to address privacy directly, than to try and spin what 
amounts to a limitation. Facebook Graph Search only returns 
results from material shared with you. That's very limiting.

Facebook Search does not index the Web. That's actually quite 
awesome with one small exception. While it is noise diffusion 
device for the unwieldy Web, it makes Facebook Graph Search too 
much like a defanged Google+ Search, only one click away from 
Google Web search. Facebook is betting they have better data, 
different data in their social ecosystem than Google.

That's not going to remain true for long. Finding Web shares from 
a Facebook Graph-filtered search product is a search experience 
that might have made a huge leap in relevance, a leap already  
glimpsed at with Twitter's Discovery tab. Facebook is proving to 
be very carefully treading on this type of turf where Twitter is 
innovating. Facebook essentially introduced filter tools and that 
is it.

It is incredible to apply the Facebook 'Social Graph' experience 
onto a website that you are browsing. Find out what your Facebook 
connections shared, what is the most popularly shared content and
find new connections this way. Facebook is bringing this 
capability home with a new series of filter tools, throwing in 
more than Web pages. The most useful features can be explored 
further in experimental builds.

What is amazing about the Facebook demonstration today, is its 
total lack of search sophistication. Filters aren't very exciting 
and had to be presented in a way that demonstrated what one can 
accomplish with the structured data of Facebook Social Graph, 
rather than set pretty higher at launch. Hopefully this will go 
beyond a search experience that amounts to little more than a 
series of filters at Facebook, and reach Bing.

While it's not sophisticated, it still points to potential future 
sophistication. Keywords are an area of concern. Facebook will 
use Bing Search for backfill. Will Bing get access itself? It is 
not only Facebook that is trying to innovate and disrupt search. 
Bing might play a more significant role with their first-hand 
search integration with the Facebook Graph. 

Matches for search intent is clearly something Facebook and Bing 
want to improve. Facebook Search already asks for 'people, places 
and things' (in keeping with how people search by nouns.) People 
have been trained by Google to search for Web pages. Among elite 
search professionals, search is a task of finding corresponding 
Web pages. Twitter, Facebook, Bing and WolframAlpha all aim to 
get back to a core search experience instead.

There are gaps to address in Facebook's Social Graph, as Danny 
points out in his observations. He doesn't know if his dentist 
and plumber are even on Facebook, let alone if they qualify for a 
share to his SEO graph connections. Since SEO is an area of 
primary concern for I-Search, Facebook Graph Search SEO would 
mean increasing the popularity of targeted connections for 
Facebook pages, just like what we do with Google+ for SEO.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Stay tuned,
I-Search

 


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