Face­book search is an under­uti­lized resource, which already has plen­ty of poten­tial as an incred­i­bly valu­able mar­ket­ing tool – and that val­ue is only going to grow. Here’s why.

As ear­ly as Sep­tem­ber 2012, CEO Mark Zucker­berg has said Face­book was get­ting 1 bil­lion search queries a day. What’s more, in its Q4 2014 earn­ings call, Yelp CEO Jere­my Stop­pel­man said, “The age of [users] going to Google on [their] desk­top and find­ing [their] way to Yelp – while it’s not over – we’ve sort of hit that peak.”

As a result, if brands want to con­tin­ue grow­ing their audi­ences via search, Face­book offers a big oppor­tu­ni­ty. That’s accord­ing to David Mihm, direc­tor of local search strat­e­gy for Moz, at Moz­con last week.

This is clear­er when you look at mobile as 17 per­cent of time spent on mobile devices is in the Face­book mobile app, Mihm said.

“Face­book has become the home app for basi­cal­ly every­one on their mobile phones,” he said. “But I don’t know how many peo­ple are aware of the amaz­ing search infra­struc­ture.”

That’s in part because of what Mihm refers to as “Google blind­ers,” point­ing to a huge dis­par­i­ty in news cov­er­age ded­i­cat­ed to Google search ver­sus Face­book search.

Facebook Search: A Brief History

The Face­book esti­mate about 1 bil­lion dai­ly search queries came before the net­work launched Graph Search in Jan­u­ary 2013. That was most use­ful on return­ing peo­ple results, such as “peo­ple who like cycling and live in Seat­tle,” Mihm said.

Then, in Decem­ber 2014, Graph Search became sim­ply “Search,” and, Mihm said, “Posts got a much big­ger boost.”

Next, in March 2015, Face­book acquired prod­uct search start­up TheFind, which helps users find goods for sale online. The net­work has also announced part­ner­ships with pub­lish­ers that allow users to browse news con­tent direct­ly from the Face­book app, which Mihm said cre­ates “a more com­plete Face­book search ecosys­tem where the behav­ior is hap­pen­ing with­in Face­book.”

In addi­tion, Zucker­berg has said Face­book search is “a five-year thing,” so, Mihm said, “I think we’re going to see tremen­dous inno­va­tion and fea­tures and new oppor­tu­ni­ties from Face­book to us as mar­keters.”

So where­as Face­book search is about search now, the future will like­ly be about audi­ence-build­ing, Mihm said. That means know­ing how to use the right parts of Face­book speech – includ­ing sub­jects, objects, mod­i­fiers, and verbs – as well as para­me­ters, could be incred­i­bly valu­able.

Here’s how.

Use Case 1: Content Marketing

When fig­ur­ing out what kind of con­tent to cre­ate, mar­keters can search for the inter­ests of peo­ple who like their pages for inspi­ra­tion.

“That’s a cre­ative way to get con­tent in front of your audi­ence,” Mihm said.

In addi­tion, brands can search for recent pho­tos tak­en at a spe­cif­ic loca­tion and, after ask­ing for per­mis­sion, use those images in blogs, newslet­ters, and the like.

“Think about the con­tent your users have already cre­at­ed,” Mihm said.

Use Case 2: Audience Intelligence

Mar­keters can also ask about pages liked by peo­ple who like their pages, which, Mihm said, can be use­ful to poten­tial­ly fig­ure out who to tar­get for guest posts.

The same is true of find­ing poten­tial local part­ner­ships by search­ing for pages liked by res­i­dents of a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­ic area who also like a giv­en brand’s page.

For more on this, see our post: Get­ting To Know Your Audi­ence Using Face­book Search.

Use Case 3: Influencer Research

Brands can also use Face­book to search for jour­nal­ists and blog­gers who live in a spe­cif­ic geo­graph­ic area, as well as friends of friends who are jour­nal­ists or blog­gers and who live in a spe­cif­ic geo­graph­ic area, Mihm said. Face­book also enables mar­keters to search for jour­nal­ists and blog­gers who work for spe­cif­ic out­lets.

“That helps you fig­ure out who to reach out to and who to build rela­tion­ships with,” Mihm said. “As well as to see who’s writ­ing and inter­est­ed in your top­ic and lives in your area.”

What’s more, Mihm said mar­keters can search for spe­cif­ic titles as well to find the right exec­u­tives to reach out to.

In addi­tion, Mihm rec­om­mends search­ing for peo­ple who use Yelp and like your brand in order to find good can­di­dates for reviews.

“You can ask them to check in and have a spe­cial so you make sure you treat them like a VIP and then Yelp will prompt them to leave a review,” Mihm said.

Use Case 4: Business Development

Face­book search can help brands fig­ure out where to ped­dle their wares. For exam­ple, a brew­ery might search for bars in a giv­en region liked by peo­ple who also like the brew­ery, Mihm said.

It can also help in terms of tar­get­ed offer out­reach by search­ing for a par­tic­u­lar demo­graph­ic – like, say, sin­gles – who like a giv­en brand and live in a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­ic area.

“Face­book search will be real­ly big,” Mihm said.

What’s your take on the oppor­tu­ni­ty Face­book search offers for mar­keters?