Facebook's Graph Search: What It Means for Businesses

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Facebook's Graph Search isn't just for looking up your old buddies and potential new friends, it's also designed for Business Pages.

The company gave the example of a search for "sushi restaurants that my friends have been to in Los Angeles" and “TV shows my friends like.” Though these are largely organic results rather than paid ads ("There are no new ad formats available today," Facebook noted on its marketer-friendly Facebook Studio blog), Sponsored Stories will show up in searches as will Sponsored Results.

Overall rankings will be based on top search suggestions including people, Pages, apps, places, groups and suggested searches. The results are also based on data shared by a business and connections of the person searching. In the blog post, Facebook urged business owners to "Continue to invest in your Page" by making sure it's up-to-date. That means updating addresses to show up in local searches and cultivate "the right fans."

The post noted that web searches will continue to be supplied by Bing.

Though it's possible Facebook will unveil paid search ads at a later date, for the moment the company is sticking to its strategy of encouraging businesses to make more engaging Pages. For brands like Coca-Cola or Toyota, it provides further incentive to cultivate and interact with as many fans if possible, if only to come up first in a search for "Sodas my friends like" or "Cars my friends recently bought."