Facebook Graph Search |

Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook today announced graph search, a new search product for Facebook. Web search allows you to use keywords, but Graph search is more structured, and searches Facebook’s database vs. the whole web. For example you could search “my friends in New York who like Jay-Z” then you would get back posts, photos, places and more content they shared related to that search query.

Currently Facebook is rolling out graph search “very slowly” and isn’t available to everyone yet. Graph search is said to respect current Facebook privacy settings and only search for content that has been shared with you.

Maybe you moved to a new area and need to find a dentist, you could search “Dentists liked by my friends“, to see dentists your friends like, and probably go to. Before graph search, you would have to Google for a dentist and look at the reviews.

Wonder what type of music Mit Romney Fans listen to, Well Facebook has an answer! Just search “Music liked by people who like Mitt Romney” and Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Nickelback, Pink Floyd came back in the demo showed today at Facebook’s headquarters.

Want to see photos of you and someone else, search “Photos of me and _____“, for example in the demo Mark searched “Photos of me and Priscilla“, then it came back with pictures of him and his wife, Priscilla.

Maybe you’re planing a trip to Chicago, you could search “Restaurants in Chicago“, and get back restaurants in Facebook’s Places database, but along with that you might see stuff your friends said about it.

Wonder what music most of your friends like, Well Facebook has an answer for that also. Just search “Music my friends like“.

Facebook seems to be making search more social with this, and for some things I would rather search Facebook over Google now, like music, places, photos, movies and shows to watch since it uses data from my friends and if you’re friends in the first place, that most likely means you have stuff in common, so it’s sorta like getting recommendations from your friends

For other things, searching for stuff may not be best suited for Facebook, like maybe statistics about city crime rates or something technical like PHP functions. Some stuff I might try searching both Facebook and Google. I think what search engine to use depends on what type of use case it is, but seems like Facebook search will show Bing results for things that would be better suited for a more traditional search engine, or what it can’t find results for within Facebook.

I think Facebook’s new search might be very useful, can’t wait to get to try it hands on. Facebook posted a few pages about Graph search on their website at https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch. Think Google should start to worry yet?

Sources: FB News Room, Verge Live Blog