Facebook Brings Graph Search To Mobile And Lets You Find Feed Posts By Keyword

Facebook is finally getting serious about search. Today it’s challenging Google for finding answers and Twitter for checking real-time chatter with the launch of keyword search. Two years after debuting semantic “My friends who…” search for people, places, and photos on the web, Graph Search is rolling out on iOS in the US along with a new keyword search option for dredging up old News Feed posts by friends.

Product manager Rousseau Kazi tells me Facebook’s personalized search results are focused first on helping people rediscover thoughts, experiences, and memories they saw in feed. Still, queries for “dentist” or “burrito” could surface recommendations from friends that compete with Google results. Meanwhile, a search for “Michael Brown” or “101 traffic” could surface a feed of recent mentions or news articles by friends, similar to Twitter.

There will be no ads on Facebook’s mobile search or any new keyword ads. But since keywords can carry lucrative purchase intent, I’d bet Facebook experiments with ads here eventually to see if they could become real revenue generators. Businesses would surely be willing to pay to insert themselves into results for “restaurant” or “lawyer”.

Keyword search is a big step for Facebook because it indexes and unlocks content previously swept away by the rushing feed or buried deep in people’s profiles. “People want an accessible way to find these collective thoughts from the community” Kazi says.

That accessibility changes how “privacy by obscurity” effectively works on Facebook. Your privacy settings aren’t changing, and keyword search will only bring up content shared with you, like posts by friends or that friends commented on, not public posts or ones by Pages. But if a friend wanted to easily find posts where you said you were “drunk”, now they could. Users should take a look at their Timeline or search a few objectionable words with their name and use the in-line privacy selectors in the results to hide anything scandalous.

 

How Keyword Graph Search Works

Facebook’s new search experience is coming to 100% of desktop and iOS users over the next few days, with a plan for Android once the kinks are worked out. You probably don’t have it just yet, though. You can still use the semantic search, but will also be able to punch in a keyword or several to find feed posts in your network that contain those words. For example, if you were my friend, you could search for “Josh Constine dancing” to see posts of me making a fool of myself.

The results are ranked with a personalization algorithm that combines the prevalence of keywords with a News Feed-style ranking based on how close you are with the author and loads of other signals. Posts show up in a feed design with the keywords highlighted blue, and spelling correction lends a hand. If the results are photos, you can browse them in an immersive photo-viewer interface.

The demo I saw of the new Facebook Search made it look snappy and intuitive. There are some filters for controlling what kinds of posts you see, though a true ‘advanced search’ option would be helpful. Facebook had plenty of opportunities to screw this up, but it looks satisfactory.