A search engine that needs instructions is doomed to fail.  This has been my feeling since turning on Facebook’s new Graph Search.  With all of their money and know how, Facebook couldn’t even make a dent in Google’s search empire.  

I really felt that applying a real search option to Facebook’s social data would generate the type of results and platform that would usher in a new form of search, one that could bring real answers back for what the world is thinking.  Facebook’s Graph Search is nothing but a fancy organizational tool for a user’s friends and their circles of friends.

Yet I can deal with that.  What bothers me more is the stiffness of the search.  Queries need to be structured in a  certain way and the data they use is essentially the data that we mark down ourselves when building a Facebook Profile.

I tested out a simple query: “Which Friends of Mine are Jewish?”  I was surprised that hardly any came back and of course the fact is I go through my friend list and can measure easily 90% that are of the Jewish faith.

So what went wrong?  It seems that Facebook is not using action based data, like from stories, posts, and images that a person likes.  They are in a sense filtering a user’s pre-picked interests and profile, data which is at the most very surface level.

I am hoping that guys (and girls) out in Palo Alto begin to dig down and make a truly sophisticated search engine based on more than just vertical matches, after all we expect  a whole lot more.