While using any app, especially social networking such as Facebook or Twitter, the biggest problem which a user faces is while sharing links. Either you need to go back to Google or any other search engine to locate a particular link or copy from other source and paste it in the Facebook platform.
It seems Facebook doesn’t want their users to get away from their mobile app inorder to search a link. They have introduced a new URL search engine in their mobile app, which will make the process of searching and sharing URLs super easy.
Named as “Add a Link”, this new search platform has being released for few selected iOS users in America, as of now. Depending on the popularity and usage data, Facebook may roll out the same for all users in near future.
Facebook responded to TechCrunch by stating, “We’re piloting a new way to add a link that’s been shared on Facebook to your posts and comments.”
How Will It Work?
In the text space for updating a new status, a new button has been added named as “Add a Link”, which is appearing alongside regular buttons such as ‘Add Photos’, ‘Location’ and emoji feature.
Once a user taps on this “Add a Link” button, a new popup arrives which asks the topic on which the user wants to search links. Once he enters the details, Facebook will display all the links which are being shared on the Facebook platform from other users.
The user can select the link which he wants to share, and add his own text, tag friends or even add the emotion icons while doing the same. A small preview of the content is also visible, which will help the user to make the decision.
Image source: TechCrunch
The links would be sorted depending on various factors, such as freshness of the link shared, likes and preferences of the user and more. Hence, basically, the user is provided links which he got without going away from Facebook’s platform.
Facebook’s Reach Is Now Bigger Than Google?
As per a Facebook official, they will index more than one trillion posts on their platform to showcase the correct and most appropriate link to the end user. If this information is correct, then Facebook’s new search engine becomes larger than Google’s search engine by a considerable margin.
Although Google hasn’t revealed the size of their indexed webpages since long, there are around 4.47 billion web pages which have been indexed till today (May 11, 2015). Even if we assume that with all their super computing power, Google has indexed all these webpages, it is less compared to 1 trillion indexed posts by Facebook.
Anyways, Facebook has now become so huge, that 25% of all referral traffic in the world is now coming in directly from Facebook! Comparably, Twitter only directs 0.88% and Pinterest directs 5.52% referral traffic.
Critics can say that Facebook is only indexing posts made by their users, and Google indexes web pages which are filled with more information and data. But the posts indexed by Facebook have more ‘user’ data, compared with any search engine; and this is the information which advertisers can give top dollars for.
This new announcement from Facebook certainly starts a new battle for search engine dominance.
If Google executives are reading this, then it is high time that they take this new threat from Facebook seriously.
