Facebook Introducing Graph Search Beta

Facebook giving you a new way to search, you can map out your relationships with the people and things you care about.
facebook graph search screenshot

Facebook Introducing Graph Search

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Graph Search at a press event at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters.

Graph Search is a new way for you to find people, photos, places and interests that are most relevant to you on Facebook.

Graph Search will help you instantly find others, learn more about them and make connections, explore photos, quickly find places like local attractions and restaurants, and learn about Common interests like music, movies, books and more. All results are unique based on the strength of relationships and connections.

Facebook Introducing Graph Search

Graph Search will appear as a bigger search bar at the top of each page. When you search for something, that search not only determines the set of results you get, but also serves as a title for the page. You can edit the title – and in doing so create your own custom view of the content you and your friends have shared on Facebook.

Graph Search and web search are very different. Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: “hip hop”) and provide the best possible results that match those keywords. With Graph Search you combine phrases (for example: “my friends in New York who like Jay-Z”) to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that’s been shared on Facebook. We believe they have very different uses.

Some example searches include:

  • People who like tennis and live nearby
  • Photos before 1990
  • Photos of my friends in New York
  • Sushi restaurants in Palo Alto my friends have liked
  • Tourist attractions in Italy visited by my friends

Facebook Introducing Graph Search

Another big difference from web search is that every piece of content on Facebook has its own audience, and most content isn’t public. We’ve built Graph Search from the start with privacy in mind, and it respects the privacy and audience of each piece of content on Facebook. It makes finding new things much easier, but you can only see what you could already view elsewhere on Facebook.

The first version of Graph Search focuses on four main areas — people, photos, places, and interests.

People: You can find people based on things they’ve shared with you, including their interests and profile info. You’ll see results for friends who share their city with you, people whose city is set to Public, and suggested results based on info shared with you.

Photos: You can find photos you and your friends have posted or been tagged in. Others will see any photos they can see on Facebook, including photos hidden from timeline.

Interests: Discover things like restaurants and music through your friends and connections.

Currently Graph Search is in beta. The limited beta of Graph Search is available only to people who use Facebook in US English. The roll-out will be gradual, starting with a very small number of users.
Go to www.facebook.com/graphsearch to get on the waitlist.