How Important is Graph Search?

Facebook’s new Graph Search at first glance seems to be a direct attempt to rival Google search, however the social network giants insist they are not looking to cover old ground.The photos, interests, places and friends that users post on their Facebook profiles naturally surmounts to a formidable amount of data that has been steadily accumulating over the years. Graph Search utilises this information to provide a much more personalised search function. It therefore offers something that no other web search engine can. For example someone could type in ‘all my friends from Cambridge who like The Office’ and get just that. If you key this in on Google for example chances are you well receive some fascinating albeit unwanted results on the locations of post offices in Cambridge.

However you could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. Everything that comes up on the results page of a Graph Search could be found by navigating to an individual profile or fan page. Granted it makes this process a lot quicker and more efficient but it’s hardly reinventing the wheel. What about when you actually want to know where the nearest post office is in Cambridge? This is where things start to get a bit complicated. Facebook have taken advantage of their relationship with Microsoft to use ‘Bing’ as a way of integrating social and web search. In the left hand column of your Graph Search you will see web results generated by Bing as well as how many people have shared the content. In the right hand column is the Graph Search results with links to Facebook pages and relevant apps.

Arguably then users are getting the best of both worlds but as Google themselves have found with Google +, it can sometimes be difficult to branch out. The social network has struggled to lure users away from Facebook. However the venture has highlighted one thing, if you want to attract the biggest brands to set up pages on your site, it helps to have a search engine backing you up. From an internet marketing perspective, Google+ is an absolute must have. Plus is now included as part of Google’s search rankings algorithm so that posts appear on the search engines results pages. Content that is shared between users will gain higher search rankings and will potentially be seen by more people. The main motive behind Graph Search may therefore be less about providing a competitive search engine and more about enhancing Facebook advertising. Theyare sending a message to Google: anything you can do, we can do better.