Is Facebook thinking about Its Own Search Engine?

Search engine is a huge business and there is a lot of money to be made in it. Although Facebook now has a deal signed with Microsoft’s Bing search, it will eventually come up with its own version of personalized search. There are thousands of websites that have incorporated Facebook’s ‘Like’ button. Using the data collected from the ‘likes’ personalized search is possible. Since Facebook has hired around 200 people who used to work with Google, it is quite possible that Facebook has the intentions to design its own search engine.

Off late, there have been a lot of speculations about Facebook coming up with a search engine. Recently, the new Timeline feature has been introduced for brands and companies even pay more for their ads to be visible on users’ news feeds. Facebook can take advantage of content that is created on the site. It could log data about the pages its users have likes and interactions with brand pages. This data can be used to create personalized search results.

For example, if a user who has been reading a lot of reviews and articles about a particular car and has clicked the ‘Like’ button on them, when a keyword related to the car is searched, the search could be customized and information that interests him can be thrown up. The search results will also be based on the interests of friends of a user. Although this might be helpful to the person who is searching, there is a good chance that the search results would end up being too commercial and just pushing products rather than real information. It is also not sure if the user base would like something that is way too customized. It is pretty evident that no two people will have the same search results.

Although it seems to be a strategy that might work out, brands need to work on to optimize the search results too. Facebook wouldn’t want the user to leave the network and somehow try to incorporate the search engine into the social networking site as it is an irresistible opportunity with huge potential to generate revenue. If Facebook can play safe without losing its user base and figure out a way to implement the social search, huge amounts of cash is bound to flow in. Since Facebook has all the data about the users’ interests and their geo location, it sure has an advantage over other search engines.

PRASHANT KUMAR