The beta release of Facebook’s new search function is important to marketers because of its potential impact on advertising and purchase decisions.
If you’ve ever tried searching Facebook for a specific piece of information, you know how clunky it can be. You might have to navigate to multiple pages before you find it, and even then it may not be exactly what you’re looking for.
Facebook took a big step this week in making search within the social network much easier by announcing the launch of Graph Search. Graph Search is an internal search engine that allows you to find things based on the interests and recommendations of friends and also their friends. You’ll be able to search on things like restaurants, movies you should see, businesses you might like or photos of your friends taken in a specific city. For example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained how you can search for “Indian restaurants liked by my friends from India” or “my friends who live in Palo Alto, California and like Game of Thrones.” If you’re recruiting for a specific job, you could search for friends of a particular person who works at the company you’re recruiting for.
So what does it mean to businesses selling a product or service? It’s important for a couple of reasons:
