By Tom Stocky, VP of Search
Welcome to Search FYI. With over 1.5 billion searches per day and over 2 trillion posts in our index, search is an important, long-term effort at Facebook. The team’s goal with Search FYI is to share our progress more frequently.
When something happens in the world, people often turn to Facebook to see how their friends and family are reacting. Today, we’re updating Facebook Search so that in addition to friends and family, you can find out what the world is saying about topics that matter to you:
- Better search suggestions: When you tap into the search box and start typing, we’ll now offer timely, personalized search suggestions. As you type, we’ll highlight things that are happening right now so you can follow popular stories as they unfold.
- Search results with public posts and posts from friends: When you search, you’ll now see the most recent, relevant public posts along with posts from your friends. Search results are organized to help you cut through the noise and quickly understand what the world is saying about a topic in the moment. You also can pull-to-refresh and see the latest public posts.
- Find public conversations with search: When a link gets shared widely on Facebook, it often anchors an interesting public conversation. Now there’s a new way to quickly dive into that discussion. With one tap, you can find public posts about a link, see popular quotes and phrases mentioned in these posts, and check out an aggregate overview of sentiment. This feature is a first step—we look forward to people using it and giving us feedback so we can make it even better.
Here’s a quick overview of how these updates work. You can also see for yourself; try searching “Halloween Costumes” or “Mets World Series.”
The diverse experiences and perspectives that are shared on Facebook can’t be found anywhere else. Your search results are personalized and unique to you and, as always, you can only see things that have been shared with you. Likewise, you control who can see your posts on Facebook and it’s easy to change the audience of your past posts any time.
Today’s updates are rolling out now in US English on iPhone, Android and desktop. We’re excited to take another step toward helping you find what matters.
For more information, visit search.fb.com.