_{by Mark Rosch & Carole Levitt | November 29, 2017}

Facebook’s Graph Search allows you to create very sophisticated, relational searches through the information people share about themselves on Facebook.

"Graph Search" features appear to have returned to the Facebook search box - with some changes.

In the latest edition of The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet, we discuss recent changes Facebook’s Graph Search. Many of our most useful investigative-type Graph Search searches stopped returning results in late 2016.

For example, it had been possible to enter the following search in Facebook's search box:

People named Kirby who work at John Deere

It would retrieve a list of Facebook users with either the first or last name of Kirby who indicated in their profiles that they worked at John Deere.

While it is still possible to retrieve Graph Search results from the Facebook search box, Facebook has changed some of the search syntax used to form those searches. Now, to retrieve similar results to the sample search (above), we must enter the following search in Facebook's search box:

People who work at John Deere named Kirby

This subtle difference in word order is the difference between useful results and no results at all.

You can also create your own Graph Searches by forming them in the address bar of your browser using Facebook’s Graph Search’s search syntax and search parameters. We have created a list of those search parameters and some tips on search syntax to create those searches in this post on conducting Facebook Graph Searches.