Facebook Search Tips

Tweak your wording and filter search results

Millions of photos, videos, people, apps, pages, groups, events, and more make up Facebook. Knowing how to search through the site can help you quickly find specific information.

Facebook provides a search bar to find people, groups, posts, or just about anything else on Facebook. You can filter results down to the details most relevant to your search.

The search bar is geared towards natural-language searches, so if you type what you are looking for in plain language, Facebook is likely to deliver the results you want.

If you're not sure how to find something, start typing exactly what you want. Auto-suggested words and phrases will appear. For example, if you start typing Tig, Facebook may offer a list of suggestions including the words "tiger" and "Tiger Woods."

Facebook search bar - filter by Posts and People

Scrolling through someone's page to find a Facebook post they published yesterday, or even a few hours ago, can prove quite the task if this person is a heavy Facebook user. Facebook lets you search for specific words and phrases, whether they were posted today or years ago.

Here's a Facebook search you might use to find posts by a certain friend or to see what the public is saying about a specific topic:

  1. In the upper-left corner of Facebook.com, enter a word or group of words into the search bar. On the Facebook mobile app, tap the search icon to enter your content in the search bar.
  2. Select Posts.
  3. Select Posts From to filter results by posts from Your Friends, Your Groups and Pages, or Public Posts. On the mobile app, tap the filter icon in the upper-right corner to filter your results.

Under Posts, you can also sort the results by Posts You've Seen, the Date Posted (year only), and posts from a specific Tagged Location.

Locate Someone You Just Met

Facebook search - filter by People

Perhaps you met a new friend over the weekend in Kansas City, and all you know is that his name is Matt or maybe you're looking for a friend of a friend. Instead of looking through all of Facebook for someone named Matt, or browsing through Kansas City groups hoping to spot him, you can combine search filters to vastly narrow down the results.

  1. Enter the name you are searching for in the Facebook search bar.
  2. Select the People filter.
  3. Select City.
  4. In the Choose a City field, enter the relevant city's name.

If you know that this person attends a specific college or where they work, enter that information in the Education or Work section.

Search for Restaurants Your Friends Have Visited

Facebook search bar - filter by Places

Facebook has a "secret" restaurant search tool that you can access only after entering restaurants in the search bar. You can even see the restaurants your friends have visited on Facebook.

  1. Enter restaurants in the Facebook search bar.
  2. Select the Places filter.
  3. Turn on Visited by Friends.

You can also filter Places by Open Now, Delivery, Takeout, Location, Status (open/closed/new hours), and Price.

A similar way to perform this search is to type something like pizza into the search bar, and then turn on the Visited by Friends filter to show pizza places visited by your friends.

This search method works for all types of businesses. Enter the type of company you are searching for in the search bar (i.e., law firms nearby), and filter as necessary.

See Upcoming Events Your Friends Are Attending

Facebook search - filter by Events

To learn more about the events your Facebook friends are interested in attending, use the Events filter in your search:

  1. Enter an event name or keyword into the search bar. For example, music is a good keyword for musicals or anything music-related. If you know the exact name, you can type that instead, such as Music on Main!​
  2. Select the Events filter.
  3. Turn on Popular with Friends.

You can also filter the events search results by Online Events, Location, Dates (today through next week), Categories, and Family Friendly.

Facebook search - Marketplace filter
  1. Enter the name of the product that you want to purchase into the search bar. Facebook will display a gallery of those specific items that are for sale in the Facebook Marketplace.
  2. To filter the results, select Marketplace. All marketplace search results can be filtered by location, Delivery method, Item condition, Price, and Date listed. Marketplace filtering options will differ based on the item for sale.

Filtered results can be sorted by Recommended, Distance, and Price.

Select Notify Me, under the search bar, if you want to be notified when your search filters match a new listing. You can select Create New Listing to sell your own merchandise in the Marketplace.

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