Facebook's Graph Search: It's a small search world

As if Google isn’t beleaguered enough with the European challenge to its dominance, equally stock-busting Internet heavyweight Facebook is expanding its empire into search functions through its Graph Search feature. Not that it’s going to see the competitive search engine queries from now on, as Google remains the untrammeled champion of search result sieving. Facebook, however, has something that Google doesn’t: friends.

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There’s nothing like peer pressure or word of mouth to influence search queries. Google could shrug this off by claiming that the world’s news and most relevant information archives are at its disposal, especially as it has been aggregating like a demon. But even news sites are creating their own circles of friends over Facebook. In time, Google’s reaction to this tighter, more focused ecosystem of research could be tested.

Already, Google is exhibiting its sang froid. Web and business analysts are also around to allay its insecurities of being overtaken as a premier search engine. For one, Facebook is yet to have a platform that will localize searches the way Google maps does. The queries conducted over Graph Search will play into the hands of very specific interests, such as local restaurants and movie schedules.

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Graph Search is predicted to generate revenue for Facebook, since it directly displays what consumers of different tastes want in any given circle of people. Products and services come up as search results based on popularity, or the number of Facebook “likes” they generate.

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It also boosts its partnership with Microsoft, whose own search platform, Bing!, will be used in the two-column interface of Graph Search results as the aggregator of recommendations. In all likelihood, Facebook will evolve into at least a special kind of a metasearch engine, much like MetaCrawler or MySearchResults.

MySearchResults was developed as a refinement for search results on the usual platforms, like Google and Yahoo!. As a metasearch engine, it scrounges for the top results across different search engines, allowing the user to prioritize certain results. Try it out here.

Most Googled in 2012

As a search results aggregator, MySearchResults has to be attuned to the comings and goings of trends in premiere search engines. An annual summary of Google’s most searched topics, also known as the Google Zeitgeist, services everyone’s informational needs. There’s just something for everyone with Internet.

The Google Zeitgeist wasn’t meant to flatter humanity’s choice of gossip, but its readers could be thankful there are equal parts meaty, groundbreaking scientific achievements in it with a slap of starch from Korean rapper Psy and way-over-the-fence insiders on celebrity break-ups.

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Are all of these tidbits useful? Yes. Consider weaving Whitney Houston’s death into an ornate metaphor about life’s scale with Felix Baumgartner’s skydiving trespass across the atmosphere’s sound barrier, or the Americans’ collective travails during and after hurricane Sandy. Counter-punch the alienation of existence with the knowledge that Gangnam Style is loathed in unison, but the world has a sense of humor.

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uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com

Notably, there’s Google having found its arm’s length with politics, as all manner of presidential elections and leadership changes were superseded on the general list by Kate Middleton, the London Olympics, and Diablo 3. Pop sensations One Direction and Selena Gomez ratcheted image searches along with a pregnant Megan Fox. The iPad 3 loomed over all this with a meta-sense of its arrival --- searching for the device that will revolutionize search queries on mobile.

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The Zeitgeist cut across 146 languages in its summation. Google’s quicker and more omniscient than ever.

Expand search results by checking out aggregates from different search engines. These are delivered by sites such as Mamma.com, MySearchResults.com, and MetaCrawler.com. Be in the know of search engines through this Facebook page.