Are you tired of waiting for Facebook to let you use Facebook Graph search to search Facebook posts? They say it is coming, but that was four months ago.
Instead of sitting around waiting at your keyboard to search Facebook posts, here is a nifty trick using Google to search through posts from a Facebook Profile or Facebook Page.
Google + Facebook search strategy
I have been using this Google search trick for a while and it is very handy for a number of reasons:
- Search competitor Facebook Pages
- Search your friends posts
- Search posts for people you are not friends with
- Save time and quickly locate past posts
To use Google to search Facebook posts, follow these instructions.
How to search Facebook posts using Google Search
Step 1: Launch Google
Step 2: Type in site:facebook.com/someusername/posts
Step 3: Press the “Google search” button
Here is what you will see when you search Facebook posts using Google.
Searching Facebook profiles
If you want to search posts on a Facebook Profile, you would enter the following search query:
Note: Not all posts will show up. It depends on what Google has indexed and also if a post is public or not.
site:facebook.com/christian.karasiewicz/posts
Searching Facebook pages
To search posts on a Facebook Page, you would enter this query.
site:facebook.com/smexaminer/posts
Adding keywords
When you first run this search query, it will bring back a list of posts. If you want to search for a specific topic, you can narrow down your search results by adding keywords.
For example, if I wanted to search Social Media Examiner’s Facebook Page for posts containing the word “gadget,” I would enter the following in Google.
site:facebook.com/smexaminer/posts gadget
Your turn
With this handy Google search trick, you can now search posts on Facebook in just a few minutes to locate posts on competitor’s Facebook Pages or to locate a post on your friends profile.
How do you see yourself using this Google search trick? What will you be searching for?
Leave a comment below.