Facebook Upgrades Search For Mobile, Lets Users Search Through Posts by Keyword

Facebook is updating its search that will bring back the ability to search for posts. The company announced that the new search will make it easier to search for the thread a user has been looking for, such as an article or a recommendation for a restaurant. 

Users can find posts from themselves, those they follow or which have been shared with them.

Initially, Facebook had planned to display results that included public posts even from people users did not follow. However, Facebook realized that users were most interested in looking posts from friends and pages they liked. 

"Usually when you think about information retrieval, it's all about matching content to queries or content to intent," said Facebook's vice president of search Tom Stocky, "but what we found is that on Facebook people care as much if not more about who is posting the content as they do about what the actual content is."

As of the now, the update has been planned for only U.S. English language users. The update will be rolled out on the desktop and the iOS mobile app by today. Facebook did not provide any timeframe for updating the search on Android. 

"We want to make sure these updates work really well before rolling them out to other platforms," a Facebook spokesperson said. 

The Graph Search can still be leveraged.  

Keyword search is being seen as a big step for Facebook as it indexes content and posts which otherwise might have lost in the midst of rushing feed. Mark Zuckerberg has already established Search as the third pillar of its product, alongside News Feed and Timeline. If it works, it will open possibilities for an extensive revenue model.