Facebook[1] Graph Search, a search engine created by the social media behemoth Facebook, was launched in 2013. It was the brainchild of ex-Google employees Lars Rasmussen and Tom Stocky. The purpose of this engine is to deliver search results influenced by the user’s profile, their network of connections, and privacy settings. It operates as a semantic search engine, placing emphasis on the search query’s intended meaning rather than the precise wording. It accommodates searches for individuals, pages, locations, check-ins, and objects within the Facebook network. Unique features of this engine include an auto-complete function and the capacity to sift results by specific time frames and user’s News feed. However, in 2019, the majority of its features were suspended to enhance keyword search functionality. Despite offering a more tailored search experience, its introduction sparked numerous privacy issues.
Facebook Graph Search was a semantic search engine that Facebook introduced in March 2013. It was designed to give answers to user natural language queries rather than a list of links. The name refers to the social graph nature of Facebook, which maps the relationships among users. The Graph Search feature combined the big data acquired from its over one billion users and external data into a search engine providing user-specific search results. In a presentation headed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it was announced that the Graph Search algorithm finds information from within a user's network of friends. Microsoft's Bing search engine provided additional results. In July it was made available to all users using the U.S. English version of Facebook. After being made less publicly visible starting December 2014, the original Graph Search was almost entirely deprecated in June 2019.