It’s finally here! The big news hit stands January 14, 2013 as Facebook is finally answering back to Google’s social network attempt at Google+ with Facebook’s own search engine, Graph Search.
Graph Search allows Facebook users to search for items that are connected with them. Facebook analyzes your relationships with people, photos, interests, and places, and then builds a strategy behind your connections.
So what does Facebook’s Graph Search mean for your brand?
Businesses with a local businesses or ecommerce page will benefit tremendously from Graph Search because these types of businesses have the best social signals for the Graph Search algorithm.
However, this change does place greater importance on a brand’s commitment to building their Facebook page content and engagement. Facebook pages that are not optimized fully with engaging content, high interaction rate, and complete Facebook bio will be on the receiving end of zero search results in Graph Search.
Graph Search also opens up doors for Facebook advertising. As brands and users optimize their pages more, Facebook will be able to reach a more precise audience specific to your target audience.
Facebook Graph Search is not the ultimate search engine for social media users…yet. Facebook is not yet clawing at the base of Web search, but it is laying the groundwork. As Zuckerburg stated, “This could potentially be a business over time.” The Facebook search team, built of 50 engineers who are led by two ex-Google employees, still has some tweaks to make to the system, but I would keep watching this closely.
+Anna Lea Crowe Social Media Strategist at Webhead Interactive.
Blog by Webhead Interactive