This morning many hardcore Facebook users will be surprised when they login and look towards the iconic top blue bar. The coloring of Graph Search has been inverted and now features a bright white centered search box in the midst of the top bar. Searches still act the same and provide the same results, the coloring has simply switched. When Graph Search launched one of the critiques was that it wasn't really a search "box." Our own Danny Sullivan stated: The tricky thing is that it’s not a new box that is taking over, not at first glance. Instead, you have to start typing in the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Facebook: Facebook Search

As Facebook Graph Search evolves and marketers begin to come to grips with the opportunities provided from the social graph, it becomes clear that a combination of both search and social media tactics are required if brands aim to improve visibility in the graph search engine results. Today, I would like to focus on how you can utilize SEO and social sharing best practices to both optimize your Facebook page and foster engagement. The Graph Search Differentiator Facebook Graph Search is based on a social graph, which means that a user's search results are personalized based on his or her [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Facebook | Facebook: Facebook Search | Facebook: SEO | Search & Social

Since its launch in January of this year, Facebook has been rolling out their Graph Search, allowing a limited number of users to perform queries with the natural language interface. In a post on their engineering blog today, Facebook explains how their natural language interface works, providing an in-depth look into the mechanics behind it. Designed to perform exact searches across the abundance of data within the Facebook graph, the robust natural language interface recognizes traditional keyword searches and can identify grammatically incorrect queries, while also providing auto-comple [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Facebook: Facebook Search

In a June 2010 Semantic Web Meetup in San Diego, Peter Mika of Yahoo!'s research division gave a presentation entitled, "The future face of Search is Semantic for Facebook, Google and Yahoo!" As the title suggests, the presentation focused on the ever-growing use of semantic markup as a means for helping computers parse and understand content. The talk focused on what was then the current state of the Semantic Web, as well as upcoming formats/technologies in development and the research being done in the field of semantic search. The idea that the Semantic Web would be central to search [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Facebook: Facebook Search | Google: Knowledge Graph | Google: Rich Snippets | Google: Web History & Search History | Google: Web Search | Schema.org | Search & Retail

With the announcement of Facebook Home, Facebook has pushed the accelerator on its local mobile strategy, which was already in high gear, thanks to Facebook Local Search and its big brother, Facebook Graph Search. By the end of 2013, I expect the social media giant to further strengthen its hold as the #2 local search app; so, it might behoove local marketers to get a handle on exactly how their businesses are showing up in Facebook these days. There are numerous ways that local business data makes it into Facebook, including: "Link" buttons on local business sites "Share on Facebook" [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Facebook | Facebook: Facebook Search | Facebook: SEO | Local Search | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local

In January, Facebook unveiled its first major move into the search space: Facebook Graph Search. Graph Search is not just another index of the Web, however. Rather, it's powered by what people are liking and sharing, leading to vastly different results than you'd see on Google. And while it’s not currently a direct threat to Google, the writing is on the wall, so to speak: Graph Search is poised to change the very fundamentals of SEO, and socially-informed search and content marketing. Graph Search is currently being rolled out as a small private beta, but over time all billion-plu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Facebook: SEO | SEM Industry: Conferences | SEM Industry: Search Marketing Expo - SMX | SMX & DMD Alerts

Pick your survey, and one of the top activities on a smartphone is to use Facebook. That's what the new Facebook Home is all about, making it easier for Facebook users to get Facebook. But it also makes another top activity -- search -- harder to do. On Android devices, search is almost always just one touch away. Most current devices have a Google Search bar at the top, while older devices have the old-style search button at the bottom. Facebook Home turns search into at least a two-touch, or two-step, process. It doesn't appear to be a purposeful move to somehow oust Google. In fact, F [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Facebook: Facebook Search | Features: Analysis | Top News

The New York Times offers an interesting story about Google and the competitive landscape of mobile. The headline is "As Web Search Goes Mobile, Competitors Chip at Google’s Lead." The central idea of the article is that while Google is used on the PC equally to discover information and to navigate to specific sites, on smartphones people go directly to apps such as Amazon, Kayak or Yelp. As a basic matter, that's accurate. However, quoting Danny Sullivan, the story also acknowledges that there's still a great deal of mobile search activity, which is dominated by Google. Indeed, accordin [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Maps | Apple: Siri | Channel: SEM | Facebook: Facebook Search | Google: AdWords | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Web Search

Goodbye Facebook Nearby, hello Facebook Local Search. InsideFacebook points out that the company has renamed its mobile app feature "Nearby" as Facebook "local search."  Until late last year, Nearby was a friend-finder tool. Then it became a way to find local business recommendations. But, many users are undoubtedly still unaware of the change in functionality. The name change will help. But, Facebook will also have to make the new local search capability more prominent and do a better job of reaching out to users to get them to engage with the tool. Yet, Facebook is already on [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Facebook: Facebook Search | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Top News

When Facebook launched Graph Search earlier this year, a noticeable element missing to marketers was the lack of keyword data that was passed. Well, this weekend Glenn Gabe of G-Squared Interactive uncovered the fact that Facebook has begun passing keyword data within referral strings. The keyword data is passed from Facebook with a query string [q={keyword}] appended to the end of the referring URL.  Since analytics providers like Google don't view Facebook as a search engine, the data must be parsed as referring traffic, not as a search engine. While the data exists, it takes so [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Facebook: Facebook Search | Features: Analysis | Top News

Besides covering The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, we’ll also go into The How and The What of Facebook Graph Search, which launched in January 2013. Graph Search was hardly a surprise to many of us, yet its implementation to date has been interesting. If well-understood, it can be leveraged by marketers and brands; but, if not well-understood, it could lead to some seriously controversial (not pretty or even possibly ugly) issues. Given that I have a background in the semantic Web field, when Facebook launched the open graph protocol with support announced for RDFa, I was very excited. I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook: Facebook Search | Search & Social

Last November, Chris Sherman highlighted the findings of Forrester research in his  article, Forrester Rates The Top Large Search Marketing Agencies. As Chris noted, the Forrester report asked and answered this question: “What are the biggest search marketing challenges you expect to face in the next two years?” Today, I’m convinced the findings were not only accurate, they are especially relevant for retailers. Below are the top three challenges the report uncovered: Integrating search marketing with other marketing Understanding new search engine developments Measuring h [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Facebook: Facebook Search | Facebook: SEO | Schema.org | Search & Retail

Facebook's engineering team is sharing some of the technical aspects of Graph Search, including a discussion today about how it indexes and ranks data via its Unicorn framework -- the basis of its new Graph Search engine. In today's blog post, Sriram Sankar talks about Facebook's technical process for identifying and ranking Graph Search results -- including how it uses click-thru rate, engagement and NDCG (normalized discounted cumulative gain) to "maximize searcher happiness." One of Facebook's challenges is combining different data verticals across its graph, and then deciding how tho [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Facebook: Facebook Search

At this morning's SMX West Keynote with Grady Burnett, Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions for Facebook, Grady said Facebook has no plans or intentions on launching an external search engine to compete with Google or Microsoft Bing. Grady Burnett explained that Facebook is focused on improving search from within Facebook through Graph Search. Facebook will not be launching a dedicated search engine outside of the Facebook environment. Here is the question and answer from our live blog coverage on Marketing Land: DS: Do you ever see Facebook wanting a dedicated search produc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Facebook: Facebook Search

We've covered this morning's changes and enhancements to Facebook News Feed over at Marketing Land: Facebook Newsfeed Evolving Into “The Best Personalized Newspaper” How To Get The New Facebook News Feed Power To Separate Feeds: A Look At The Filtering Inside The New Facebook News Feed Facebook's New News Feed: The Before & After Look None of the changes announced today, however, affect Pages or Graph Search, which is still rolling out. Eventually posts will be indexed and make it into Graph Search. In that context, some of the News Feed changes may eventually have an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Facebook: Facebook Search

Although slightly different than the Spanish case discussed yesterday, the "right to be forgotten" has reared its head again -- this time in the UK." UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve has threatened legal action against anyone posting pictures of convicted killer Jon Venables online. TechDirt offers a short summary of the underlying facts of the Vendables case: Jon Venables, [ ] at the age of 10, murdered 2-year old James Bulger, in a rather horrifying story. Venables was released from jail in 2001, at the age of 19 (though he has since gone back to prison). Photos of Venables, now 30 yea [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Privacy | Twitter: Business Issues

Today, Facebook has shared information that "hundreds of thousands" of people are using its Facebook Graph Search service, highlighting that people still use it like "old' Facebook search -- to find friends. Facebook then suggests some ways to go beyond that, for those who have the new search feature. New Ways To Find Friends From its post, Facebook said that people typically begin using Graph Search to find friends, which isn't surprising. Finding people has always been by far the main way that people have used Facebook Search. Facebook offered some related examples to try, such as fin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Facebook: Facebook Search | Top News

Once in every five times that someone clicks a search result, it goes to one of five websites: Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Wikipedia or Amazon. That leaves about 80 percent of search clicks for the rest of us. Going further, the top 500 websites received almost 50 percent of all clicks from search results, and the top 10,000 websites got almost 75 percent of all search clicks. All of this is according to the 2013 Digital Marketer Report from Experian Marketing Services (Hitwise). The company says that those five sites I listed above combined to get 20.07 percent of all clicks from US [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | eBay | Facebook | Features: Analysis | Google: YouTube & Video | Search & Society: General | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Last Friday, Lars Rasmussen, Facebook's Director of Engineering, did an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit to discuss the ins-and-outs of Graph Search. Lars answered 20 questions from fellow Redditors shedding some light on the history, importance and technology behind Graph Search. According to Lars, the initial Graph Search was internally launched in Summer of 2011, but the project was conceptualized in Spring 2011, on a walk with Mark Zuckerberg. The initial project was bare bones, and the internal beta  for Facebook employees wasn't released until Fall of last year. The technology sta [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Facebook: Facebook Search | Top News

Facebook is the most preeminent social networking site in the world. It is not the first and probably won't be the last, but it is likely the most important. Facebook usage is massive because users spend large lengths of time on the site. If Facebook was a country, and its users were citizens, then it would be the second largest country behind China. But, Facebook has become far more than just social networking, expanding from company pages and fan pages to social gaming; the variety of ways that users interact with Facebook keeps growing. [caption id="attachment_146954" align="alignc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Search & Display