Back in January of 2013, Facebook announced an upcoming search engine called 'Graph Search.' It has taken a long time, but that search engine is finally ready to roll. In fact, Graph Search is available to most Facebook users today. If you use Facebook, here is what you'll find with the new Graph Search.
What Graph Search Does
Graph Search lets you search your Facebook social network for friends, places, interests, photos, and all kinds of other things. For example, you can type "which of my friends has ever been to Paris?" Graph Search will then comb through your friend list to find friends that have traveled to Paris. You can ask Graph Search anything, and the results will show up immediately.
What happens if Graph Search can't find anything that goes along with your search? Facebook has hooked up with Microsoft's Bing to create Graph Search. This means that if (and when) Facebook can't find the answer to your question, the site will pull up Bing search results instead. Not only is the new search an interesting tool, it's a faster one.
Faster, Better, More
Facebook has stated that the new Graph Search is easier to use and it gets better results than the older search feature. The mobile version of the new Graph Search is still not available, but Facebook reps claim that they are working on this version, and that it will be available soon. For now, you can use Graph Search today if you live in the United States.
Don't live in the USA? Here's a quick fix: set your Facebook language settings to English/USA. Once that's done, you should be able to use the new Graph Search. Even though the new Graph Search was developed to make life easier for Facebook users, some wonder whether or not this tool is safe.
Graph Search Has a Creep Factor
Even though Graph Search might be a useful tool for Facebook users, it's also a great way for someone to find out details about any Facebook user. Graph Search means that anything you want to know about someone will be easily found, and that could scare some users away from the social network.
On the other hand, Graph Search doesn't appear to be that big of a deal. For those that have started using the search, the results have been minimal at best. Still, it's interesting to see which of your friends have been to certain places or which ones speak different languages - whatever you want Graph Search to find will be uncovered when you search, and that was the whole point of building the new search engine. Have you used Graph Search? What did you think of the new Facebook search?
Facebook aims to update a bunch of new features on the social site over the next few months, and Graph Search is just the beginning of it all. Stay tuned for more updates from Facebook. This network feels the fade coming, and it's trying very hard to hold onto the top social network title.