Facebook Graph Search Important Changes

booleanstrings Boolean 31 Comments

Many people have noticed that tools that provide access to Facebook Graph searches, such as Shane McCusker’s Chrome extension or Searchisback, sometimes don’t produce results any longer. Using the Graph search directly, via URLs, we now also see some searches leading to empty pages. I want to bring some clarity to what has changed in the searches we have been using for sourcing and suggest some fixes.

As we know, we can search “by a string,” with the URLs including a) “/str/” b) Facebook IDs. For example, people who like pages named “Python” can be expressed as https://www.facebook.com/search/str/Python/pages-named/likers or https://www.facebook.com/search/7899581788/likers.

Here is the summary of changes:

1.  The “/str/” searches that include either “employees” or “students” no longer work. I.e., we can’t search “by a string” for employers, job titles, schools, and majors. (Example of a search that no longer produces results, only shows an empty page: https://www.facebook.com/search/str/google/pages-named/employees.)

2. Searching by IDs, we need to replace:

  • /major/students by /students
  • /job/employees by /employees

– then the searches involving those will start working again.

(Tools that will update the searches that they run in the background will also produce results, except for the searches outlined in “1.”, above).

Here is a variety of searches on Facebook that work.

Combinations:

There is one additional change I am aware of: “groups of a user” was https://www.facebook.com/search/100000155790214/groups – now (oddly) needs to be https://www.facebook.com/search/str/100000155790214/groups.

Please check out our fully updated online class Facebook Sourcing Mastery.

Comments 31

  1. Excellent explanation of the changes than you.

    Having investigated the blank page that people are getting with some of the broken searches, it is due to a JavaScript error and so is an obvious bug rather than a deliberate change. That said I did have an indication from someone who works at Facebook that some or possibly all of the Graph Search URLs may be being switched off. This is obviously not good news for those of us who want to search deeper than the general search bar allows so hopefully there will either be a bug fix or a work around found soon.

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      1. Hi ,thank you so much ,but it’s giving me posts on the 24th of June ,how can I get posts by keywords for today ? June 27 th,most recent posts

  4. Unfortunately, search for users by date of birth seems to not funktion anymore, too.
    i.e. fb.com/search/str/1/sep/1980/date-3/users-born/
    Does anyone know a solution for this problem?

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  5. Also i am getting stories by friends how can I get general public.
    So what link for this “Latest posts written by people who live in New York ,NY about videographer

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  6. Hi ,can you give me links for
    1)today’s posts by anyone about “montauk”
    2)posts written recently by anyone from New York about “videographer”

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  7. Hi is there a way of finding out what the different profession numbers are, for instance, i’m looking for healthcare professionals, is there a way of finding out what the string is for physio, radiographers, speech and language therapists etc is?

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      Hello Alex,
      Thanks for the comment. To search by a job title, you need to find the Facebook ID for that title. This post – https://booleanstrings.com/2018/06/29/facebook-ids-for-job-titles/ – explains how to find IDs for job titles. As an example, you can search for Work positions named “Language Therapist”:
      https://www.facebook.com/search/str/language+therapist/pages-named/117968858296276/pages/intersect/
      You will find the page for “Language Therapist” and its Facebook ID is 132596230115256. So, you can search for Language Therapists like this: https://www.facebook.com/search/132596230115256/employees
      Irina

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  9. Hi Irina,
    do you know if we can combine for example several ID locations in one url string? I have ID numbers for several cities in specific radius and I would like to cover it in one url string instead of doing several for every location separately. Would this eventualy workg also with company ID´s or job ID´s? I tryed already but without results.
    Thank you
    Jan

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      1. Perfect, thank you Irina. And now let´s say I have combination of three locations:

        https://www.facebook.com/search/112210515472222/residents/106501412717965/residents/102172659824363/residents/union

        That works well. How can I connect correctly this formula with job tittle ID? Logicaly I tried the example bellow but that doesnt work.

        https://www.facebook.com/search/112210515472222/residents/106501412717965/residents/102172659824363/residents/union/11111111111111/employees

        (last number is wrong intentionaly)

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      3. Ok. It is working well with one position ID, but what if I want to add several positions in that string?

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    1. How much would you charge me to help me get the latest posts by “keywords” on Facebook ,I used to type “posts written recently by anyone from New York about “…..”

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  11. Hello Irina ,please please I need helps with posts ,they must be recent ,for years I used the Posts written recently by anyone about “keyword” but since May 1 at ,it’s not working
    What can I use nowadays .
    I pretty much want present posts by Public about anything

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  12. Wow, wasted my day trying to learn FB, Coincidentailly, I just took a free class on Facebook searching using url search strings last week and nothing works. Oddly, it did work during the class for both the presenter and my own string. Not now though. I also tried some of your suggestions:
    We couldn’t find anything for https://www.facebook.com/search/str/Python/pages-named/likers/104958162837/employees/ever/intersect
    I’m guessing the latest FB changes affected your strings as well?

    Thanks for the effort and rich content, some of the best I have found but I am at the point of thinking FB is just going to change things up every couple of weeks to force people to pay for advertising or for rich search results. Do you agree?
    Thanks again.

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      Reb,
      Thanks for your comment! This link – https://www.facebook.com/search/str/Python/pages-named/likers/104958162837/employees/ever/intersect – works fine for me and my colleagues. But you are right, Facebook Graph Search links sometimes stop working – or start again, for no apparent reason. I doubt these changes are related to Facebook’s wanting more advertising money. These are likely some internal code changes; some might be related to GDPR.
      Irina

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  13. Hi, Irina! Please advise: if I need tools (instruments) that can show me some interests of people, who like my page. For example, i have 100 followers, and i want know about same groups or fan pages which they include. May be find that 25 of 100 my friends likes one pages and 30 of 100 likes other… Could you help me and advise how can i received this information?

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  14. Is anyone aware of a way to add a negative aspect to a search string? For example, people who like “Page ID” but do not work as “Job Title ID?”

    Thanks!

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  16. Is there a way to use Facebook Graph Search to reflect a Boolean NOT? I administer several groups with overlapping memberships. I know how to use Facebook Graph Search to show the intersection of two or more groups. But occasionally I would like to find people who are members of Group A but NOT Group B. Can this be done?

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