For the past few months, a few of us at CES have been beta testing
Facebook’s Graph Search feature. On July 8, 2013, Facebook announced the
feature will soon be available to all Facebook users who have selected US
English as their language. In order to prepare for the new search features, it
is important to understand that Graph Search works quite differently than the
current Facebook search feature.
Flexible Queries
Graph Search allows users to create flexible, complex queries for
information. Instead of the current system in which users have to search for a
term and then sort the data, users can now string together the
relevant pieces of information to narrow search results. For instance, if you
wanted to locate a jewelry store in Saint Augustine, Florida, you would simply
type “Jewelry Stores in Saint Augustine, Florida.” The returned results only
include jewelry stores which are located in Saint Augustine. The ease of using
Graph Search allows us researchers to perform queries at a faster rate because
we no longer have to take the extra step to run filters, and we can make more
complicated searches than ever before. (See the Facebook Graph Search Cheat
Sheet below.) However, not all search terms are easy to work with, and search results
can be misleading.
Data Issues
Just because Graph Search says it returned all relevant search results,
it does not necessarily mean all relevant results were accessible and/or
properly categorized. There are a few major issues with search results in
Facebook. First and foremost, users can choose to opt out of search results;
this would exclude these users from the results even if they meet the criteria.
Second, many users have privacy settings that prevent the system from returning
their information in search results. Third, Facebook users do not necessarily
complete their profile nor input their data in a uniform way. For instance, one
person our St. Augustine office technically lived in New York, New York, but
she identified her location on Facebook as her neighborhood, Harlem, New York,
which would excluded her from New York, New York results. Finally, not all data
fields or types of information are currently searchable, including posts. If
the data you are searching for is embedded in posts, you will miss that
information in your search.
Conclusion
Facebook’s Graph Search is a great tool. In the office, many of us used
to complain about the difficulty we had searching for information inside of
Facebook. Aside from the missing post search feature, the site has become much
easier to use for locating information. Although Graph Search has some issues
and requires users to learn the language before they can effectively search the
system, it is ultimately a step forward for searching inside of Facebook.
In order to help you use Graph Search, we created a quick Graph Search
Cheat Sheet.
