It’s been a long time coming, but it appears as though Facebook finally has begun integrating Live Search into its main search bar, thereby providing web search in addition to its preexisting profile search capabilities.
The functionality appeared earlier today for users, only to disappear again. Facebook published an official post about it only to take that down as well . Microsoft’s own post, however, can still be found here.
Update: Web search is now back, as is Facebook’s post about it. See our observations below.
The integration is a natural consequence of Microsoft’s $250 million investment in Facebook last Fall. Google has a similar deal in place with competitor MySpace.
Once it’s back up we’ll get a chance to see how web search affects Facebook’s autocomplete suggestion system, and whether or not results are tailored to your profile information. After more time pasts, we’ll also see whether this partnership can stem the continual loss of Microsoft’s search marketshare to Google.
According to Microsoft’s post above, Facebook is using adCenter to display advertisements alongside results.
Venturebeat managed to capture the following screenshots before the integration was removed (presumably only temporarily).
Update 2: Since it’s back, we’ve had a chance to try it out and make a few observations:
- The search bar still suggests friends as it did before. If you enter a term that doesn’t match a friend’s name, it will ask whether you want to search the web or Facebook. The option for web search is second and requires users to hit the down arrow on their keyboards, so it will probably suffer from that.
- The advertisements appear to be a mix of Facebook’s own ads and those served by adCenter
- The formatting of the results is a little clunky. It would be better if they stuck to the traditional formatting found on Live.com itself and other engines like Yahoo and Google
- The Facebook web search implementation doesn’t show image results, etc — just basic webpage results
- The results are not the exact same as on Live.com but they’re close
- Sponsored results do not show up on the top of all other results. The advertisements are all placed in a right-hand rail
- If you view search results by all types, the “Web” tab is the furthest to the right on top of the page, after People, Pages, Groups, Events, and Applications. It really doesn’t look like Facebook is giving web search much prominence, at least in its current incarnation.
- Facebook’s blog post says this is only available to visitors from the United States, but Orli in the comments below seems to have access from Israel
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Typical crap. The paid search result for “palo alto restaurants” is “portland restaurants” from citysearch. That is just horrible.
Frank, I took the screenshots from up in Oregon so the paid results are functioning correctly.
Oops, thanks for the clarification Eric. You didnt search for restaurants in portalnd though, did you? This tells me LiveSearch thinks it knows better what I want than I do.
So this is the beginning of the end for Google? Isn’t this why they (FB) are valued at 15 billion?….
ooohhh Exciting!
Google stock dropping and social search is here!
This proves that FB is not worth $15B. This is a way for Microsoft to start producing revenue from their $250M wasted investmment in Facebook. This is the fastest, easiest way to get the MSFT investment to return. This of course will not be a succesfull integration, but Facebook needs to care for investors, expecially ones where Zuckerberg’s hero is involved, Bill Gates.
MS + FB = Greatest Merger Ever!
what took them so long to implement this?
it’s back up now.
Facebook integrating Live Search means good opportunity for Microsoft.
Agreed. Microsoft needs to get in front of the eyeballs of young people again. Mac has a near lock on the cool factor among college kids these days. All MS needs now is a way to tie Live Search to windows and try to build Vista’s image….
Hendrickson what do you mean? it’s there
http://www.flickr.com/photos/orliy1/2921937617/
don’t you see it too?
yep now i do - looks like it’s back
Well, I know about it thanks to this post anyway
Facebook needs a more comprehensive search of its own data (not just profiles but through all the data that is available to a user) not just slapping on a typical web search.
Agreed - this is much more important in my mind, too
Absolutely agree. Facebook data is for now untouchable to Google, and the more useful content that lives inside these closed walls, the greater the advantage to Live search.
I agree… this isn’t an impressive add in my opinion at all. It’s typical of so many sites.
Microsoft have no chance… they are wasting money. Google have the power.
http://www.imagensparahi5.net
I really wish Microsoft would just give up on search. There are so many other areas they could focus on. Its a lost cause and everybody but Ballmer knows it. Giving away cash - either to facebook or directly to users - just highlights their desperation.
I think alot of Fad FB users wont like the Livesearch results and rebel against the site pushing msn’s mediocre results on them. The results dont compare with googs or yahopes. This partnership was not a deal of who had the better search engine or to enhance the fb experience. The deal was all about money and not about a integrating the best quality product. Fb users may rebel and i think that is why it has taken so long for implementation. Facebook Fear. Mike claims the top 3 engines are about the same, i tend to disagree.
I thought the ad agreement was for ads placed outside of the US. Appears it was just another sneaky maneuver as msn gets pimped on all FB users.
AdvertisementLocator.com
A feature that will not be used much. MS will have to buyout FB for $8 billion to obtain all data. I guess mark was really smart after all to bait MS into investing then walling up his garden thus off limits to Google. What a way to seduce your victim or your pimp.
If Microsoft buys out Facebook… I’m going back to MySpace. Ew.
But I thought the times of garden walls were gone. Ugh.
This is probably the most useless feature of all Facebook… When I want to do a search… I’ll fire up a new tab and I’m gonna Google whatever it is that I want to google… Why would I stay on Facebook to do a search ???? What does it have to do with Facebook… Facebook helps me organize and stay in touch with my contacts… not search or browse the web… anyway… just my opinion…
Totally agree - I’d make the argument that maybe less tech-savy folks would just search wherever they’d first see it - but I doubt those same people would “down arrow” to MS Live search.
i think this could be the beginning of a very synergistic search
Sorry - why am I searching the web from fb instead of using the search box in my browser???
Microsoft and Facebook makes it more bigger. As Jason jason@tinycrunch said. Microsoft gets roi.
OUCH! MY EYES HURT!
god it’s ugly.
Groundbreaking. Stunning. Out of this world. Perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve ever read about.
lets hope its not another beacon!
I’m not sure MS will be making much (either money or increase in search volume) from this. There will definitely be some odd people that use it to search, just like any other website that has a web search box. It may help getting people acquianted with Live.com (although the web search button is somewhat hidden, it may be worth thinking about people’s browsing/exploring/digging behaviour [which i'm assuming is nuts] on FB as giving it a chance of being exposed at some point).
Maybe this is just a branding strategy for MS… no real technology development planned
I wonder if this is the culprit for Live Search to issue the following message and force me to enter a CAPTCHA phrase?
“Your search has triggered our robot detector. This happened because your search was similar to searches used by some automated computer programs. The robot detector helps keep our site quick, accurate, and reliable.
To continue your search, please enter the letters and numbers you see in the following picture into the text box, then click Continue.”
the search is also available in the UAE
i love orkut better than facebook
I noticed that the alt attribute for the loupe image that makes you start the search says “Search Facebook”…Yeah web search definitely isn’t top of FB’s list.
Anyway the search function seems to be available also here in Italy, but the results aren’t geolocated. That makes it even less useful…
Good job MS+FB but I don’t think it will hurt the popularity of Google at all.
also works in shanghai, china.
Interesting how Facebook (Microsoft) is following in Myspace (Google) steps.
cool article mark,
ms will continue to integrate as many of their products / technologies into fb - it doesn’t hurt either of them. eg: hotmail contacts import, this search thingy, ads,
anytime before they integrate fb contacts into live messenger…perhaps
the search is also available in Indonesia..