Ever wonder how the articles you like will be used by Facebook? Once we like a page, we are linked through the like and link feature but it seemed to stop there. Until now … Facebook has upgraded their search with the most recent addition of liked articles displaying in search results. The results displayed are from your “friends” and not all users. According to a Facebook representative via ,
“We launched the ability to see articles shared by your direct friends in the search type head. For instance, if your friend is on a news site and clicks ‘Like’ under one of the articles (which will then go into News Feed), when you go to search for that article on Facebook, it will surface in the drop down.” Most significant is that the content displayed “is only available for articles shared by your direct friends (not globally to all users on Facebook).” Additionally, “This is not surfaced to you based solely on number of ‘Likes’ for the article.”
Facebook Liked Article Search Results
Facebook’s addition of the liked articles to the search results is really nothing more than compiling newsfeeds for all your friends and displaying then to match your search query. It is immediate, organized and also keeps you on Facebook and not bringing you over to a search engine. Not every result will yield satisfactory results however for the ones that it does, the user not only has the information they were requesting, but they also can now like the page.
What do I search for with Facebook Search?
You can search the same way that you do on the search engines. I performed numerous searches that for most I was provided pages and not articles shared by my friends. This is due to no fault of Facebook, my friends did not “like” articles that matched my searches.
A search for “facebook search” displayed the following results:
As you can see, my friends had liked articles from various sources that were useful but yet did not provide a whole lot of information regarding Facebook Search.
Facebook Search as a Search Engine
As Facebook Search is, at this time is only providing results from items that your friends like, it is not really a viable source for obtaining information. As Facebook continues to grow and expand its resources for personal and business usage, we can only expect that they will expand upon the information provided and go head to head with Google and Bing.
Have you used Facebook Search? Have the results satisfied your needs or have you had to go to the Google or Bing for a more thorough search?
photo credit: william couch
