Reply All Just (Accidentally) Reminded Us About The Power of Facebook Search | Step Up Your Social Ep 16

One of my favorite podcasts, Reply All, just did a whole episode trying to track down something that wasn’t showing up on Google. If they had remembered that Facebook, while first and foremost is a social media channel, is also a search engine, they could have saved themselves a whole lot of time and energy.

The Facebook search bar is more powerful than you probably realize. In this episode of Step Up Your Social we’ll walk through some of the power lurking right at your fingertips.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!
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Drop us a line or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

Want to listen to the recreated version of the song? Or the original one? You can hear both in Reply All episode #158 The Case of the Missing Hit.

Or scroll down and listen to them both below.
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Do you listen to Reply All? It’s an awesome podcast about living in the age of the internet. Or something like that. If you don’t listen already, you should. It’s one of my favorites for sure.

Last week, they dropped an episode called “The Case Of The Missing Hit.” In it, PJ, one of their two hosts, goes on a truly epic search — and I mean epic in its literal meaning — to find a song that was big enough to be played on the radio internationally in the 90s, but somehow had [virtually] no presence on Google.

The story starts simply enough: A man named Tyler reached out to PJ for help. He could hear this song in his head, but he   couldn’t find it on Google, even though he remembered many of the lyrics. It’s a weird concept in today’s age, where we can find virtually anything online. And yet the song was nowhere to be found… with one weird exception. Years ago, a guy who lives in Trinidad and Tobago had asked about it in an online message board, referencing several of the same lyrics that Tyler remembered. But of course, he too, was trying to track down the song.

This proved that Tyler hadn’t made it up, but it also didn’t help PJ solve the case of the missing hit.

To solve the case, PJ did what any normal person with a budget and an obsession does: he helped Tyler recreate the song in its entirety from memory. Tyler took a song he hadn’t heard in more than 20 years and he coaxed it out of a group of session musicians. PJ then took that recording and talked to… well everyone!

He spoke with numerous music critics from Rolling Stone, producers, radio show hosts from the era, even the lead singer of the Bare Naked Ladies, as the song in question had a very BNL type feel too it.

Google failed them, so PJ took his query to the world. And in the end, all this time, energy and effort amounted to… nothing. Everyone he spoke with had a great idea about how to try to solve the problem. Every great idea took PJ down another rabbit hole. And every rabbit hole ended as unceremoniously as it had started with, “sorry, I just don’t know.”

Then something the Trinidad and Tobago guy had said in his original post sparked something in PJ and he plugged a few lines of the song into Facebook’s search bar. Immediately, not only did he find the song… he found the songwriter who had written it in the first place.

So much time and energy and effort could have been avoided if PJ (or Tyler for that matter) had remembered that while Facebook is first and foremost a social media platform, like virtually every other social media platform you know and love, it’s also part-search engine.

So let’s talk about a few other things the Facebook search bar — that simple little bar right at the top of your account — can do, that you might not have realized:

First things first, type something — anything — into the bar on desktop, and you’ll be brought to a search page. From there, you have a slew of filtering options both on the top of the screen and on the lefthand side.

On the top of the screen, you can choose to only see posts, people, photos, videos, market place, pages, groups, apps, events and links. So the next time you’re trying to find a Facebook Page and you can’t quite remember what it’s called, instead of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, try filtering instead.

On the lefthand side of the screen, you have a whole other bunch of options. You can opt to see posts from anyone, or only yourself, your friends, your groups or pages, or only content shared publicly. You can even choose a source, to see if a friend, group or page has talked about an issue you care about.

Want to see all posts? Of course you can do that. But you can also limit your search to only posts you’ve already seen. Which could come in super handy if you’re looking for something you saw, but can’t remember where.

You can limit your search to only show content tagged in certain locations or posted in a certain year — or even in a certain month of a certain year!

So yeah, right off the bat, you can see that while Facebook might not be Google, there’s more to its search then simply keywords and scrolling.

Now let’s get into some of the less obvious things you can do with Facebook search:

Once upon a time there was an easy way to see which of your friends lived in which city. Then Facebook got rid of that helpful  feature. But good news, they replaced it (they just forgot to tell anyone). Looking for friends in a particular city or state? Just type in “my friends in [wherever]” and Facebook will show you a list.

Looking for a bar, a pizza place, or a spot to get your oil changed? Type in “pizza places near me” and Facebook will show you a list, with a map. Just like Yelp, but without ever leaving Facebook.

Want to know if your friends liked the pizza place you are considering? On the top menu bar, head over to places. On the lefthand side, select “visited by friends.” You can also filter by “open now” and  price!

Want to know which events your friends are going to (or should we say so-called friends, since they’re apparently going out without you!)? Type in a keyword. On the top menu, go to events. On the lefthand side menu, go to “popular with friends.” You can also search for events based on location and date, to find things to do today, tomorrow, this week, this weekend or next week.

While their Boolean search isn’t as powerful as Google, you can employ it to some degree. If you don’t know Boolean by name you might know it in practice. Boolean search is a method of search that lets you filter or exclude terms by using all caps AND, NOT and ORs. So type   “social media” AND “Madison, WI” into Facebook (or Google) and you’ll only get content back that mentions both. Switch AND with OR and you’ll find content mentioning either. Go with NOT and you’ll find content mentioning the first term but not the second one. This can be pretty helpful when trying to narrow your search.

Now it is worth mentioning that while Facebook search is powerful, it’s far less powerful than it used to be. Google “Facebook search bar tricks” and you’ll find tons of articles telling you about a bunch of features you can use. But alas, Facebook killed a lot of them off when they did away with their Graph Search. This feature let you see which of your friends liked which pages, and which posts had been liked by a specific person. Guess it was all just a bit too invasive for a company so worried about your privacy. #LOL

But there’s still plenty you can do with the Facebook search bar.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!

Drop us a line at stepupyoursocial.com or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

In the meantime, don’t get stuck like Tyler and PJ. Start appreciating the power of Facebook search today!

PS: want to hear the song PJ and Tyler recreated, as well as the original? I’ll have links to them both at stepupyoursocial.com.
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