A big change is coming to your Facebook experience beginning as soon as this week, the social network announced today.
Facebook’s Graph Search, which premiered in January and was made available to those who opted in for the beta, allows very specific searches within your friend lists.
We’ve been using Graph Search since January and have enjoyed the functionality. Explaining Facebook’s new search can be done with visuals.
The new Facebook search takes over nearly the entire menu bar at the top of every page and can be activated with a single click.
Specific searches can help you find a group of friends you may want to invite to an event or speak to about a certain topic. For example, if you want to find only your friends who love Harry Potter so you can invite them to a group reading:
You can even go so far as to add “who live in [your town]” at the end of that search query, and Facebook will display only friends who like Harry Potter in the town you choose.
You can also do searches to easily browse a collection of your activities on Facebook. For example, you can search for “Photos I Like” to see only the pictures you’ve liked from all of your friends. A “Refine Search” button sits towards the top right which lets you drill down into those results for specific years, places, or friends.
Facebook announced this morning that those who use U.S. English Facebook will begin seeing Graph Search in the next few weeks.
The new search bar is such a departure from the previous design that you’ll have no problem noticing that it’s been added to your account.
Graph Search is a very helpful tool for users, and you can rest easy knowing that all of your existing privacy settings are still in effect. The problem? It’s easier for your friends to dig deep into your profile from the convenience of their search bar.
For those who already have the new search features, Facebook says that you can look forward to improvements like the ability to search posts and comments in addition to its availability on mobile devices.