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Health & Fitness

Blog: Is Your Facebook Page Ready for The Graph Search?

Preparing your fan or business page for the Facebook Graph Search

A couple of weeks ago, Facebook announced a new feature called Graph Search. Though still in its  beta stage, Graph Search could signify a huge shift in the way people search for information online.

What is the graph search?

Essentially it acts as a search engine within the network of user’s friends. With this feature Facebook users can search and find common interests among their friends. Instead of finding a restaurant in a particular place to go to, the user can find a restaurant that his Facebook friends love visiting in that specific place.

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So what can you do to prepare for it?

Aside from doing the usual maintenance to ensure your Page is complete and up-to-date, Facebook recommends the following:

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  • The name, category, vanity URL, and information you share in the “About” section all help people find your business and should be shared on Facebook.
  • If you have a location or a local place Page, update your address to make sure you can appear as a result when someone is searching for a specific location.
  • Focus on attracting the right fans to your Page and on giving your fans a reason to interact with your content on an ongoing basis.

Possible “Google Killer”?

To early to tell, really. Although consider its main drivers  return more relevant and meaningful content for users. Not only does Graph Search provide a more in-depth search experience for its users, if no one in a searcher’s network has engaged with content related to his or her query (e.g., if no one in the searcher’s network likes “pizza” on Facebook), Bing acts as a secondary search engine to reveal content from friends of friends, as well as other search results from all over the web.

So far it seems that PlaceMusicBooks & Movie Pages are the beneficiaries of their category classification.Make sure you have your Page listed as one of these major categories if it fits. If your Place doesn’t fit these categories, don’t worry. Just review your category to make sure you are properly classified.

The main goal now is showing up in Graph Search. This means your page is going to have to be “liked” by more and more users in order to be relevant within their own social graphs and exposed to their networks via Graph Search.

Make sure to fill out your About section complete with keywords. Facebook Pages are indexed in Google and so you’ll want to have your perfect keywords in your About section to improve your chances of being found. i.e Facebook SEO

Always make sure you create content that initiates high engagement levels: Facebook has stated on its website that content with higher engagement levels will not only show up in the social arm of Graph Search (ahead of Bing results), but also in users’ news feeds more often.

Undoubtedly the Graph Search will continue to evolve as it goes through beta, but you can start encouraging interactions such as check-ins and tagging to help your Page show up more prominently as it begins to roll out to more and more people.

Of course these are the basic changes that all of us are going to have to do. Allowing experts to go above and beyond for your business or brand is always going to be the best strategy. Good thing you have access to a team that fits that description ;)

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