Some users may notice a slight – but significant – change to Facebook today. The social networking site has started testing a new feature: a web search box that appears at the top of the site.
This may seem like a minor change to the appearance of Facebook, but this could mean big things for the world of search. Although this has not been confirmed as a permanent feature, it would gain major traffic if implemented (more than 250 million daily viewers to be exact).
The search field is expected to be powered by Bing, which would heavily impact its presence in online search. While this is still uncertain, driving traffic from Facebook to Bing-related web results would significantly increase the search engine’s online ranking.
It can only be expected that the placement Bing would receive from this feature would carry a pretty hefty price tag. However, it could hold significant weight in how Bing matches up against other search engines.
In any case, the appearance of this feature only suggests one thing. The two worlds of search and social media have once again united. As Facebook continues to test out the possibility of incorporating online search into their site, we can only wait and see what this means for the online world.
