We are fortunate to have this guest post about the new Graph Search Facebook beta written by Freelance Writer Terra L. Fletcher, one of my co-authors on the DIRJournal blogs.
Click image to read official Facebook announcement and sign up for Beta
FACEBOOK GRAPH SEARCH
Google and Facebook have long had a battle. Today, Facebook is making strides with search. Graph Search was unveiled by Zuckerberg on January 15,2013. Facebook’s search until now has been, well… terrible. Graph Search, currently in beta, looks to be quite the improvement.
Analysts are predicting that Graph Search will provide impressive micro-targeting for advertisers who want to know their friends’ preferences before making decisions. Whether searching for a restaurant or a life partner, Facebook’s Graph Search just may have the answer.
Huffington Post described the new tool well:
“If you’ve not heard about Graph Search, it … is being positioned as the third pillar of the Facebook platform alongside the Newsfeed and Timeline. Facebook Timeline is where you post content. The Newsfeed is how that content gets distributed.
And now Graph Search is how you can leverage the connections between your friends and the brands they like to generate unique and personalized search results.
In other words, Graph Search enables you to search for the best places to eat, to shop, to stay — to buy insurance or to find a plumber — based on shared social connections; the results are implicit recommendations from trusted sources.
With Graph Search, Facebook is opening a new world of social discovery by unlocking the value of our likes, check-ins, photos, and more.”
Unlike major search engines that provide lists of links that may contain the answer you’re seeking, Facebook promises to eliminate a step and return very specific answers.
Local business pages may be bolstered as their pages get discovered
using products similar to the “nearby” feature recently released.
Local businesses on Facebook should encourage customer engagement. Remind users to like, check-in, recommend, rate, and tag photos.
Relationships continue to grow in importance. Mass production of corporate content dulls in comparison. (Nationwide chains may suffer initial shock from the switch to hyper-local focus from brand focus.)
One forewarning: Facebookers in general will need to be retrained. Facebook users who spend the majority of their time on their own newsfeed (or cyberstalking other’s Timelines) will need to adjust.
Instead of passively consuming content
Facebook users will have to search.
Granted, they don’t need to leave Facebook to do it, but they will need to learn that they can enter open-ended and specific queries and get out of the habit of leaving Facebook to search on Google.
As an advertiser, you should be curious about how social searches will function. Facebook Graph Search should keep users on Facebook longer. The increased time will give more data to Facebook and advertisers who are seeking to present more relevant ads. It’s likely that businesses with the most likes and check-ins will shoot to the top of Facebook search results.
Companies seeking better graph search result rankings will purchase more ads on Facebook to get them. Perhaps 2013 will see Facebook (which made over $5 billion in 2012) grow in revenue. (Google made over $50 billion last year.)
Improved relevancy means higher conversion.
With higher conversion rates, advertisers are more likely
to pay a premium, taking a slice out of Google’s pie.
Read the latest from Facebook about Graph Search. While you’re there, request to be added to the waiting list for the beta test. Local companies that take the initiative and take advantage of this new tool will gain a competitive edge. Focus on reputation and relevance.
Short video explanation of Facebook Graph Search:
FACEBOOK GRAPH SEARCH VIDEOS:
- Complete Zuckerberg KeyNote Facebook Graph Search Announcement
- TheVerge: Facebook Graph Search Hands-On Live Demo
- CNET How To : Get started with Facebook Graph Search
- Bloomberg: Facebook Mines Proprietary Data for `Graph Search”
- SearchEngineLand: Matt McGee: SEO For Facebook Graph Search? Facebook Has Some Tips
FACEBOOK GRAPH SEARCH STRATEGIES and CASE STUDIES:
- WebMetricsGuru: Facebook Graph Search and User Profiling
- MarketingSherpa: Search Engine Marketing: Navigating Facebook Graph Search
- Facebook Graph Search Case study – Treater
- Hubspot: Facebook Announces New Social Search Feature Called ‘Graph Search’
- Renegade: Using Graph Search for Your Brand
Have you signed up for Facebook Graph Beta?
What do you think about it? Tell us in the comments.
If you want to read more of Terra’s content, follow @TerraFletcher on Twitter. To find out more about her, visit her Fletcher Freelance site.
You can also subscribe to the DIRJournal blogs where Terra L. Fletcher and I (Gail Gardner, GrowMap) both write by entering any email address on this DIRJournal Subscribe page to see them. Coming soon: feeds to allow you to subscribe by author.
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Facebook Graph Search will prove to be a new milestone for facebook. I think it has a lots of potential and surely it will increase much growing popularity of facebook.
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graph search has changed the scenerio of the searching opti it very much verstile and has also made it very much easy to get to friends ! a vey nice andawsome post !
harshi would love you to read ..Best apps on Lumia in the Market Place!
Eager to try the Graph Search. Perhaps it will take 3-4 more months for Graph Search to be available for Asians….
Naser would love you to read ..Ferrari F430 in an Aggressive Look
Got this Graph Search few Days Ago But It’s Not Too Good.What Do You Think About The Facebook Graph Search? I think It needs Some More Customisations and features.
Zapworld would love you to read ..Where Can I Download Windows 7 Iso
I have been give this thing a go around and I am pretty in pressed with it all and all. It is fairly easy and does seem to return more relevant results. So I give it a thumbs up for now. Thanks for sharing this article.
Tim Potter would love you to read ..Double Tragedy strikes
I think Graph Search need to do much more to compete with Google. Google crawl and page indexing is awesome. I had a very bad experience with bing (tied up with yahoo) crawling and indexing . So if Bing and Yahoo together is not able to compete with google, then FB need to pull some surprise to make Graph Search a Success .
Seems to me that Facebook is using this approach to create a better path to direct their users to their advertisers. I don’t see them implementing this to make things easier but more profitable.
Robert Kaiser would love you to read ..Two Car Crash In Santa Clarita
I believe Graph search is no competition to google search simply because it is only inside facebook and it seems to depend a lot on “my friends who”
VJ would love you to read ..The Complete Security Guide to Twitter
This is a great information about the Graph search as you can track your work or network with it.
Graph search is not going to create any problem for google.Google is goole and fb is fb.
Thank You
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February 7, 2013 at 10:06 pm
Facebook is moving in the right direction. It will no sooner become a competitive search engine. Facebook graph search is a step towards its success. Thanks for the insight as I was not very well versed with it.
Very informative .First time am heard about Facebook Graph .Well detailed post .Thank you
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This makes it even more important for every business not only to be on Facebook but to actively participate. Although the problem with Facebook Graph Search is that it’s too limited and doesn’t truly provide users with every relevant result as Google and the other search engines do.
I’ve used facebook frequently since it first came out in 2005 (and was called “The Facebook”). I have never once felt the need to search in it, except for a friend. I can’t see this as being all that useful…. of course I also am shocked that Twitter became a thing, so who know!
Ivan would love you to read ..Death at Work – Does Your Job or City Need 10 Safety Tips?
Thanks for the information. Google search will think of this sure.
Paul would love you to read ..Spotting The Right property In Florida Foreclosure Market
I still feel that since people don’t go on Facebook in order to search for content with the interest in making purchases, this might all be overblown. Google still has control of this battle in my opinion–if I want a product review or information on how to purchase something, I go to Google, not Facebook.
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This is a good post on what Facebook Graph Search is about but I highly doubt I would use it. I just don’t know if I could get used to results from a search that is going to give me results specific to my facebook friends interests.
I just received Facebook graph search on my profile. It does look neat and offers more option to search Facebook more efficiently. Sooner or later Facebook will turn out to be a big search engine where people will find more and more products, Q&A, tips etc.
This is first step towards it
Kinjal would love you to read ..Micromax A27 Ninja Emerges in Inventory of Website
I think the graph search on Facebook has a lot of potential but right now it is not refined enough. Eventually it will allow people to find most of the information they are looking for and lessen the need for them to leave Facebook and go to an off site page like google, yahoo or bing when they are doing a search for something.
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I wasn’t know about Graph Search. Here i know about this, Thanks for sharing this, hope this will increase the finding someone in facebook within a short time
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