While Facebook currently provides its own powerful search product, there are numerous other search engines around the web that include social media. Here’s our list of the seven best ones.
Greplin
Greplin is a search bar that aims to find desired results as it navigates through your social world. Choose to only search through Facebook, and it will pull up everything on the network surrounding the terms you wish to find. The service shows search results as you start typing for searches requests and the index is based on all the personal services you use (LinkedIn, Google Calendar, Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter, etc). In contrast to your local search on you computer this service has comprehensive results from all of your services which I could see being a priceless feature.
Just last week this company raised $4 million from Sequoia capital and we have no doubt this company has a bright future ahead. You can watch a video demo of the service below.
Booshaka
When Booshaka first launched last year, the service aggregated Facebook pages and let people search through all the posts by them. It was an interesting service, except it didn’t seem to catch on, which is why the company has gone back to work on the next version. While we’re not sure what the company has planned for the future, the first version of the search engine was comprehensive, even if not that useful. The only question that remains is whether or not this company can do something useful with the powerful technology that it’s built.
I had previously suggested that the company build a system to show what’s popular on Facebook rather than showing an unfiltered stream of content. We’ll have to wait and see what Booshaka comes up with!
Bing
In an effort to compete with Google more effectively, Bing has been looking to leverage its close relationship with Facebook as much as possible. Back in October the company announced that it would provide a comprehensive integration with Facebook, effectively turning Bing into a social experience. Google countered the Bing-Facebook partnership last week with their announcement about expanding Google Social Search.
As Matt McGee of SearchEngineLand wrote, the new Google Social Search uses Twitter as the “like.” Microsoft isn’t slowing down, though; just last week the company announced that it had integrated Facebook into the company’s Bing browser. As the battle between the two largest search players heats up, one thing is clear: Social is the future of search. If you are looking for a tool that leverages Facebook to help make web searches more relevant, Bing is definitely a good option.
Foupas
With the help of Google, Foupas is a Facebook search engine that gathers information from various aspects of the site. Honestly, this product is probably one of the weakest search services we’ve seen. All the company does is wrap Google search results of pages on Facebook in a frame in an effort to generate some revenue from ads. The product adds absolutely no value over existing search services. If there’s one product you can skip, this is definitely it.
Kurrently
Kurrently shows what people are publishing right now on Facebook and Twitter. While it’s a little bit annoying to have the search results automatically stream down your screen, it’s the equivalent of what Summize was for Facebook. One odd thing about the service is that if there are no recent search results, Kurrently just keeps repeating the most recent update every few seconds.
While interesting in theory, Kurrently has a lot of work left to do. In essence it’s just pulling search results from Facebook and Twitter and showing them in a stream. We’re holding our breath until we call Kurrently a true search competitor.
Openbook
Openbook garnered a lot of attention after Facebook first opened up its search results. Openbook was used by the media to illustrate that Facebook users don’t actually know what they’ve made public and what they haven’t. Unfortunately the service doesn’t really provide much over other services. At one point the product listed some “useful” searches which would yield users who were publishing public updates that the probably shouldn’t be sharing.
For example, searching for “hangover” shows a bunch of people that stayed up last night having one too many beverages. Ultimately there’s nothing you can do on this site that you can’t already do on Facebook, which is why this site served as nothing more than a publicity stunt. However, if for some strange reason you really want to search for public status updates and want to do so outside of Facebook.com, you can visit Openbook.
Social Mention
In contrast to some of the low-value search engines included in this list, Social Mention appears to be serious about social media search. The service provides a real-time analysis of what’s being discussed around the web and displays the results in an easy to digest format. The one problem with the product: The search results take forever to process! In fact, I couldn’t even stay on the site long enough to see my search results show up. If this company is looking to be taken seriously, it needs to provide their results quicker than it currently does.
While the analysis provided by Social Mention is valuable, nobody would use Google if it took a minute to generate results.
There's another one at elog.com. This site isn't specific to Facebook but it has an option for going into Facebook-mode (select Facebook from the little dropdown next to the search box). If Facebook would allow its pages to be shown below the results, it would be really nice.
Comment by Striker Johannson — February 22, 2011 @ 11:55 am
How about Google's new RealTime?
Comment by Miranda Opiela — February 22, 2011 @ 12:44 pm
Do any of these enable the user to search Facebook for a term, let's say, "skateboards", and see who is talking about that term at the moment…the same way we can search Twitter with Twitter search?
I'm yet to find one.
-Jason
Comment by Jason — February 22, 2011 @ 2:44 pm
Thanks for the shoutout about Bing. We really value our partnership with Facebook and have built a number of killer features that use the public updates people publish across the network. PRO TIP: you can see the trending topics on FB and actually scope your searches down to just FB content by going here: http://www.bing.com/social?s=2&t=60&FORM=... . Check out how we show you links being shared to really help you dig through the status comments. Last, dont forget to check out the new Bing Bar (http://toolbar.discoverbing.com/toolbar/) which has integrated FB notifications and updates right into your browser. Stay tuned for tons more – and thanks for using Bing.
Stefan Weitz
Director, Bing
Comment by stefanweitz — February 22, 2011 @ 7:46 pm
I dont think Google's RealTime is a FACEBOOK search engine.
It is based on live tweets, yahoo answers and news articles, but not on Facebook (Which is what this article is about)
Comment by SVS — February 22, 2011 @ 11:44 pm
Good list…elog.com has similar feature.
Comment by mentorlog — February 23, 2011 @ 4:33 am
Wow, I never knew there was Facebook search engines. Thanks for the info.
Comment by SCube — February 23, 2011 @ 9:11 am
Great roundup! Just wanted to add http://www.Wajam.com to the list, it's a browser extension that lets you find Facebook and Twitter links in your Google and Bing results. We're still in private beta, but if anyone would like an invite just ping me at alexandra@wajam.com! Thanks and please excuse the shameless self promotion.
Alex
Community Manager
Wajam.com
Comment by Alexandra Dao — February 23, 2011 @ 11:04 am
This one is much better
Social Search: http://status.idolbin.com
Integrates facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz and also provides trends and similar search results with user profiles.
Comment by Masum — May 20, 2011 @ 9:02 am
http://www.bahoogle.co.cc lets you search google, yahoo, ask and bing all at the same time!!!
Comment by George — May 31, 2011 @ 11:03 pm
I would like to know who and how to contact the person that disconnected rworley@cablellynx.com, Ruby Worley from my facebook accountant and why this occurred. Is it because I will not upgrade my account and pay somekind of money, or what is the reason for the punishment? Also, what about all these people with these first amendment rights, like Dan Abernathy, Reggie Cowan, and the list goes on and on that say horrible things about our President and Anthony Weiner. Look at some of the nasty posts, why are they allowed to do all these things? Why aren't they taken off facebook for their abuse of our President and Congress and government.
Comment by Ruby Worley — June 20, 2011 @ 9:02 am
There are obviously a lot of social search engines emerging. http://truthfeed.com has also an interesting and quite unique approach. They also measure the topic's sentiment and "hype".
Comment by Cimeon- — June 21, 2011 @ 3:20 pm
http://www.quadoople.com is the former http://www.bahoogle.co.cc, where you can search Bing, yahoo, ask and goole all at the same time.
Comment by Tony — July 11, 2011 @ 3:04 pm
really nice info
Comment by shazim — July 26, 2011 @ 6:32 am
another facebook search engine and facebook trend tracker http://www.topicstatus.com is a great site to do a facebook search, see what is trending on facebook and get the latest news for facebook trends.
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Comment by jason and Boys — August 29, 2011 @ 12:22 pm
this is really very nice if facebook make a search engine than google going to down and facebook up thats great but i like google not any other http://www.webcreation.us
Comment by cheap website design — September 14, 2011 @ 6:52 am
Try this new facebook search engine, very simple to use
http://objectssearch.com/facebook.jsp
Comment by tom — September 16, 2011 @ 2:27 pm
Do any of these allows the user to search Facebook for a period of, say, "boards" and see who speaks these words at the moment … the same way that we can search Twitter using Twitter Search?
Comment by world news — September 22, 2011 @ 8:50 am
i m new to this . if same like help me ,well come .
Comment by shakya man sochan — November 29, 2011 @ 11:39 am
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Comment by maaz — December 8, 2011 @ 8:22 am
You should also try the italian facebook search engine http://facebookcerca.com
Comment by facebook cerca — December 15, 2011 @ 10:07 am
At last finally I can search facebook thank you for the very important post.
Comment by ???? ????? — January 17, 2012 @ 3:41 pm
These are certainly great engines to find out what is going on, especially if you want to see what people are saying about your brand.
Comment by web design stafford — January 22, 2012 @ 2:36 pm
great, ii have try many website. thanks
Comment by QQ Review — February 16, 2012 @ 12:31 pm
when will be face book launch their search engine ???
Comment by Treppenlift — February 21, 2012 @ 4:42 am