It’s sort of a baby step in Facebook’s efforts to improve its search results, but certainly worth noting here: Facebook is now showing news articles in its search results and ranking them by how many “likes” and “shares” the articles have received from Facebook users. The All Facebook blog says the number of friends who liked/shared an item also impacts the ranking.

Using the search box atop my Facebook profile to search for “Google,” I get a dropdown with these results.

The rankings don’t appear to be based exactly on number of likes/shares, because the top result seems to have been shared by seven people, while the second result seems to have been shared by 19.

It’s also worth mentioning that these result only show up in the dropdown below the search box. If you actually complete your search without choosing one of the items from the dropdown, the following search results page is a completely different experience with no news articles to be found.

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

Related Topics: Facebook

About The Author: Matt McGee is Search Engine Land's Executive News Editor, responsible for overseeing our daily news coverage. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. See more articles by Matt McGee