Bing search results removed from Facebook.

 

Facebook has removed Bing search results from its internal Graph Search feature, and will now only display results from content posted within its own network.

A spokesperson said it was now “focused on helping people find what’s been shared with them on Facebook”, as opposed to displaying results from the web.

Although there are around 1 billion Facebook search queries per day, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted members weren’t conducting web searches.

The removal of Bing results was a part of the update to Facebook’s Graph Search feature which Bing had been included in for the last year.

Focus turns to improving Facebook Graph search

Facebook Graph search was unveiled in early 2013, and supported certain semantic phrases like “friends who live in Manchester” or “friends who work in London”, returning relevant results.

Through the improved search engine, users will now be able to search via keywords to quickly find old photos, links, videos and comments posted by friends.

There have been some other changes to its search engine of late, including improvements to iPhone, Android and desktop functionality.

Long-standing partnership to continue

Facebook and Micosoft have long been involved in strategic partnerships, including Microsoft providing banner ads for the social network between 2006 and 2010 before Facebook took control of its internal advertising.

Microsoft still holds a small but lucrative 1.6% stake in Facebook who stated they “will continue to have a great partnership with Microsoft in lots of different areas.”

Despite this development, Bing increased its UK search engine market share to 6.5%, but another setback for the search provider is that Yahoo could end its partnership with Microsoft during 2015.

Some positive news for Bing is that it is now the default search engine within Mozilla Firefox 34, which could help strengthen its ambition of becoming a real alternative to Google’s market dominance.

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