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UPFRONTS NEWS
FACEBOOK SEARCH ARRIVES
Graph Search in beta I
t’s been a busy year so far for marketers keeping up with Facebook. In January the social network
announced its first, and long anticipated, foray into search. Facebook Graph Search, which is still only available in a limited beta format, is powered by users’ ‘likes’, shares and other activity and designed to serve users with the sort of personalised results currently provided by Google and Bing. At the moment users are required to join a waiting list, but once the service is rolled out, it’ll enable us to search Facebook for friends with specific interests. “Graph Search is not web search,” Mark Zuckerberg told a press conference at the time of launch. “It’s about
graphing our part of the web.”
Initially, the search function will be limited to people, places, interests and photos, but, explains Keith Peiris, Product Manager at Facebook, as the service evolves it’ll be able to answer nuanced queries such as ‘what movie should I go and see?’ and ‘what bands might I like based on the friends I have?’ Users’ privacy choices determine what’s searchable. “You can only search for the content people have shared with you,” says Facebook’s software developer Lars
Rasmussen. From Facebook’s
perspective, this is a clear bid to raise engagement and create a more compelling experience for users, which will doubtlessly be reflected in how advertising operates across the site. So what are the implications for marketers?
“This will inevitably lead to monetisable searches such as, ‘best new movie releases to watch this weekend’ and ‘new restaurants my friends like in New York’, says Damian Routley, CEO of Glow. “It’s then a small step for people
to start generating deeper search queries that eat into Google’s core business, such as, ‘what is the best hotel in Paris on a budget?’ and ‘which smart TV should I buy?’ The principle is that the most trusted reviews and recommendations come from people you know. That’s the value that Facebook brings to search and that’s why they’ll be a serious contender in this market. “From a marketing
perspective, I would recommend that brands start to optimise their site, page and app for social - ‘social SEO’ will become key in preparation for the wider roll-out and the inevitable paid search offering that will follow. “Further to this, those
companies that have a close integration on the Facebook platform will overtake those who keep it at arm’s length. It’s also likely that Facebook will give a preference to those companies that have this integration purely because the quality of information feeding the engine is better – and this means a better service for the user.”
facebook.com/
about/graphsearch
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