3 Reasons why Facebook’s Graph Search will not have major impact on Google Search

Last fortnight, Facebook announced its much expected ‘Graph Search’ and web search powered by Microsoft’s Bing. Experts in internet field went ballistic over it and declared that it will a giant killer or more specifically ‘Google Killer’.

    But as a user, I have a different take on that. Yes, off late, I have experienced better search result on Facebook than what I was able to get few months back, but both the effort put together can’t be a ‘Google Killer’. I have my reasons listed below:   

1)      Chances of getting the information on Graph Search will be limited to size of network: Graph search will search the ‘Likes’ and ‘Check-in’ of network and bring out the recommendation for user on that basis. It will not search and analyze status updates. It is not necessary that the information which I would be looking at, may be hidden somewhere in my network. Had it been so, I would have already known it by that time, because Facebook anyways brings the activity our network in forefront through newsfeed. If any user’s friend list is too huge, then it may come as help.

Further, if network of any user is small, then probability of finding his answer will also be very small as per rules of probability, because limited number of people would have provided the information on that topic or may be nobody would have provided information on that topic at all. If your network is big, then there is greater probability of getting any answer. But again it will go against the philosophy of Facebook, which encourages you to keep only those person in your network, whom you know personally and often bars you from making any friend, if you tries to be friend with person, who is outside your network. .  

2)      Graph Search will provide insufficient information: Facebook encourages your network to be very private and you connect with only those people who are personally known to you. Maximum of Facebook users are sharing their content (status updates, photos, videos etc.) through their personal profile only, which may again prove to be insufficient to get any specific information and recommendation. Nobody writes exhaustive review unless and until he/she is very fond of writing, so, the provided information will be insufficient. Further, ‘Like’, ‘Check-In’ ‘Photo’ etc., does to give the complete story. Texts are also very important, and this is something through which we communicate and understand. Other things, which we do on Facebook are just to increase the engagement level.

If any of your friends has liked ‘Apple iPhone 5’ and ‘Samsung Galaxy Note II’, then you can make only thing out it is your friend’s liking for powerful and beautiful Smartphone and by the way, which Smartphone you would be buying on the basis of this information. If you go by these ‘Likes’ only, then you will end up making assumptions only about the features. Your friend may have liked the device for one reason, and you are looking for something else. For one set of persons, UI and apps may be important in a Smartphone and for other, processing speed and battery life and I am sure, you would not get these information through ‘Like’, ‘Check-In’ and ‘Photos’. Requisite information will come though written words only and for it, you will have to go to web search.

3)      Facebook’s web search is powered by Bing: Facebook’s web search is powered by ‘bing’. What’s new in that; it is same since 2010 and it has not been able to do wonders for Facebook in last two and half year. Google is undisputed Search Leader. As more than two third of search traffic is towards Google, it means more and more information is optimised for Google’s algorithm. More optimised information means more content to look out for.

Google encourages creativity in content and understand the synonyms of keywords, which is not the case with ‘bing’, where exact keyword in verbatim is very crucial. Backlinks are one of the key points in Google rankings and it gives weightage to available recommendation. It affects the search results also. In the case of ambiguous search, where meaning of search may be more than one, then Google will throw more popular search result, while ‘bing’ will bring local results first, so, as a  recommendation tool, Google is more useful than ‘bing’.

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-          Mukul Bhartiya

Digi Age