Facebook's Graph Search: One Year On

Introducing Graph Search in March 2013, Facebook created a powerful engine that generates results based on exactly what users want to see. Initially, its roll-out was limited to just a handful of US English users.


To monitor precisely how the feature was doing, Facebook continued this gradual roll-out, introducing the feature more broadly to all US English users in July 2013, and UK English users in November 2013. It is now available to hundreds of millions of English-speaking users. On launching, the feature certainly had the potential to transform the digital advertising space and take on some of the search engine giants such as Google, Yahoo! and Yelp, but one year on, how is it faring?

Yet in 2013, Facebook still only accounted for 5.7% of all global digital advertising revenues, significantly lower than Google's share at 32.4%. Does Graph Search hold the key to helping Facebook boost its digital advertising revenue share?

People can use Graph Search to find out which restaurants are worth visiting in a particular area or which hotels their friends have recommended. Taking this one step further, Facebook is in a position to use the Graph Search platform to help local businesses identify and connect with potential customers. Mobile advertising played a key role in pushing Facebook's revenues north, so it was a smart move to introduce Graph Search to mobile devices this February, albeit a little delayed. It will now be interesting to see how the extension to mobile will translate into increasing Facebook's advertising revenues even further.

What will also be interesting to monitor is how search data will be used on Graph Search in relation to advertising. Search is the best indicator of consumer intent. By allowing advertisers to target consumers based on the keywords they enter into Graph Search, Facebook could seriously start to increase its advertising revenues. This is because advertisers would be willing to pay more to get their adverts in front of users they know will click through and convert. It's yet to be seen whether search adverts will be introduced to Graph Search, or if so, whether consumers will be willing to share their personal information with Facebook for this purpose.