Have you noticed Facebook’s notification for the new “Search for Posts” lately?
Facebook marketers, did you have a premonition that the blue giant was experimenting with its search process silently?
Facebook is going to launch its own search tool today - Report
Facebook officially drops Microsoft’s Bing search results. It means if you search anything on Facebook, it will no longer show you “Search on Web” option. Last week, they slowly dropped Bing results from the network without any official announcement. Later a Facebook spokesperson confirmed the news to Reuters on last Friday.
Facebook said
“We’re not currently showing web search results in Facebook Search because we’re focused on helping people find what’s been shared with them on Facebook.”
This incident marks the end of a 7-year-old partnership, which started in 2007 when Microsoft invested US $240 million in exchange of a 1.6% stake in Facebook.
Microsoft also confirmed the news on Friday,
"Facebook recently changed its search experience to focus on helping people tap into information that's been shared with them on Facebook vs. a broader set of Web results," a Microsoft spokesman said Friday.
Why Facebook broke up with Bing?
To answer the question, we first need to understand why Facebook includes Bing search results within the network. It was simply to prevent Google to enter the system. But now Facebook might not want to redirect their users to external sites through Bing searches. So far they did it because they had no other choice. With 1.35 billion user-base, their own search tool can easily retain their users within its periphery.
And most importantly, search is that one domain where Facebook has been trying to overshadow its nearest competitor, Google for a long time. This was pretty evident from one of Mark Zuckerberg’s comments in July 2014.
“There is more than a trillion posts, which some of the search engineers on the team like to remind me, is bigger than any Web search corpus out there.”
With the vast amount of search queries that the network generates everyday, Facebook can replace the need for any kind of web searches in the near future. Well, that's what the social networking giant thinks.
And it’s not the first time that Facebook did something like this
As a part of the Facebook-Microsoft partnership in 2007, the latter provided banner ads on the former’s site. But in 2010, Facebook ditched those Microsoft banner ads and stepped into the advertising business even more seriously.
Here are some changes you might already notice:
The moment you place the cursor on the Facebook search box, it shows you recent searches.
Previously you saw something like this
As mentioned earlier, Facebook will no longer provide you with an option to search outside the network. So, there is no “Search on Web”, and instead it offers you an option to find your answers from the network itself.
Let’s find out the results first.
Look at the highlighted phrases. They exactly match with your search query. It means from now on you will get answers to your questions from your Facebook community. It might appear from your friends, or your groups or from the pages you Liked.
And look at the different tabs.
Each tab will show you results from the concerned source. For example, if you choose people, it will show you people, who visited a restaurant or liked a restaurant business page. Under “Photos” tab, you can see images clicked on various restaurants by your community.
Right-hand side search bar for search graph is zapped.
Good for Facebook. But what about Bing?
With this break-up, Bing is definitely on the loser’s side.
Bing is currently the number two web search engine with a 19.4% market share in the U.S. (Source comScore)
Google is still leading the way with 67.3% market share followed by Bing and Yahoo (10%). Will this shift change the figures? Will it prove advantageous for Google to increase their search market stake? Write your opinion in the comments section.
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