Challenges to Facebook Graph Search

Facebook has come up with something called a Graph Search. With this new tool, you will be able to find people and activities of interest within your social pool. It is kind of a personalized search, but within the confines of your own domain and not spilling over the large ocean of the internet. Facebook believes that Graph Search will help you connect and coalesce with your friends and family, even strangers, who have similar tastes in food or music, to name a couple of aspects.

However, if you think that Graph Search of Facebook is a game-changer, experts advise a fair amount of caution. They point out to the fact that Twitter was also part of Google’s search results till the microblogging website found this arrangement disturbed by the search engine giant back in 2011. The cause of this fallout: Google felt that search results gleaned from Twitter live feeds obstructed the organic SERPs. So, this theory of offering personalized searches within your own zone has already taken a beating.

More importantly, psychologists have repeatedly challenged the assumption made by Facebook. Facebook feels that users with the same kind of mindset engage in similar activities and share likes and dislikes. That is not the case in reality. People with similar tastes do not always look for the same things! It is true that peer pressure often dictates the choices that we make, but more often than not, people are willing to look beyond the curve at unexplored territories. For such consumers, Graph Search will not be able to work wonders. That will be a serious challenge for advertisers who will pay for the ads related to Graph Search.

Another serious challenge that Facebook Graph Search is up against is how many consumers will be willing to share the kind of personal data and preferences that go into building up the data bank of this personalized search tool. This is even truer for people living in Iran or China where internet access is restricted and also under watch. For them, Graph Search may turn out to be a failure. Online giants like Google have already come under intense pressure from these pockets to remove all traces of personalized data. It is only the days to come that will reveal if Facebook Graph Search can overcome these impediments.