Facebook Graph Search VS Google Search – SEO RESEARCH SERIES PART 5

Here are the details of the research I conducted today!

Search 1

Search Query – “Buy Contact Details of Company” 

Here is what Google returned :-

# I have eliminated the ads

Clearly, the results returned does not satisfy the user’s query. The top 6 results do not contain sites that sells database of companies.

Now, here is what Facebook Graph Search returned :-

The results returned via Facebook contained information regarding where can I buy contact details of companies and also contained a results from business directories which sells company database.
(Note: the results were powered by Bing as Facebook by default presents results from its partner search engine Bing, whenever it is unable to find results from user’s social circles or when the query is something which can’t be semantically broken down in social terms. Here BING saved Facebook and returned useful results. Because Facebook has this feature of displaying search results from Bing, I will consider it as a part of Graph Search)

Result – Facebook Graph Search emerged as a winner.

Search 2

Search Query – “Parks that my friends go to”

Here is what Google returned:-

Google returned results that were nowhere close to what I was looking for and was unable to satisfy my demands. Google lacked that semantic search ability which Facebook has slowly acquired using enormous chunk of data stored in its user database.

Now here’s what Facebook Graph Search returned:-

The results were clear, relevant and completely close to what I was looking for.

Result – Facebook Graph Search emerged as a winner.

If Google Engineers are reading this, they need to do something and update the algorithm accordingly or else Facebook will slowly and gradually take the search engine market share away from the search giant, Google.

Conclusion

Although the research done is not so comprehensive and gives a little idea on how well the Graph Search would work for other queries but in can be taken as a start for Facebook engineers in order to present the most relevant results to its users. It can also be taken as an input for Google engineers to quickly correspond to the growing abilities of Facebook before it’s too late.

(A part of Seo research series by Joydeep Bhattacharya)

Also See:-

Query Highlighting in Google- SEO RESEARCH SERIES – Part 3
Utilizing TF-IDF Score to Increase Google Rankings of Your Site- SEO RESEARCH SERIES PART 4

How to Track Facebook Likes in Google Analytics
Facebook Graph Search
Facebook Voice Messages