Will Facebook’s Enhanced Public Search Tool Challenge Google?

Almost one year ago, Facebook decided to transform its search bar from only being used to find other Facebook users and Pages into a tool for finding what those users were saying. The social media giant indexed everyone’s posts so that users could see which of their friends were discussing a particular topic by typing a phrase into the search box instead of waiting for the post to show up in their News Feed.

Now, Facebook is taking this initiative one step further by indexing the entirely of its 2 trillion posts and making them searchable by users.

This decision certainly turns Facebook’s search function into a broader and more interesting tool than simply being something to look up one of your friends on the social network. Since many people spend a large amount of their online time on Facebook, it hosts a big percentage of the links that people share from around the web, as well as discussions people have about news, personal interests, and other moments in their lives. The social network’s search team is now turning that firehose of human interaction, which already generates a staggering 1.5 billion daily searches, into a giant repository of discussion that is searchable by anyone. For dealerships, public posts to their business Pages will now be searchable by all users on the social network, allowing them to generate content about current events that could increase their overall reach on the platform.

Users will now be able to search for a broad topic and find a tailored, hierarchical list of relevant Facebook posts. The search results will start with authoritative sources, such as news organizations, subsequently becoming more granular as a user scrolls down to find what their friends are saying, liking and commenting on, and then finally listing what strangers are saying about the same topic. For the first time on the social media platform, users will be able to easily find the posts of anyone discussing a specific topic, as long as the post is designated as public.

“Because we’ve indexed the entire world’s conversations, we tell you things that are trending, things that are breaking, what’s happening right now,” explained Rousseau Kazi, a product manager on Facebook’s search team. “The whole idea here is that if you can group these pieces of content in certain ways, it makes it pretty easy to get the full story.”

Will Facebook eventually be able to compete with Google on search?

There’s no question Facebook’s massive enhancement of its search functionality could prove to be a game changer for the social media giant. With its new service, Facebook is putting itself up against Google by attempting to position itself as the quintessential source for news. While Google has been indexing the world’s information, Facebook aims to index all of the world’s conversations as well. Perhaps the social media network’s enhanced search tool will increase user engagement, as there may no longer be a need to exit the website or app to find news elsewhere, such as on Google or Twitter. The increased user engagement could subsequently lead to new levels of discussion on Facebook, which would lend it more traffic and, in turn, benefit its vast advertising clientele and lead to additional ad revenue.

Of course, for billions of people, Google is still synonymous with search, at least for now. Will Facebook’s enhanced tool significantly alter this perception in the future to allow the social media giant to become a major player in search?