Facebook finally lets everyone search for old posts

 By 
Stan Schroeder
 on 
Facebook finally lets everyone search for old posts
Credit: Luke Leonard/Mashable

Before today, if you closed a tab on a Facebook post, it would have been lost forever; there was no way of searching for it.

Facebook updated its search on Monday to let users find older posts.

"Search at Facebook is a long-term effort," Tom Stocky, the company's VP of search, wrote in a blog post announcing the update. "Today is a step toward helping you tap into the experiences and perspectives of your friends."

Previously, typing "Hawaii" into Facebook's search box would only yield pages and apps related to Hawaii. But now, the search results page will also display all the posts you have previously viewed that contain the word "Hawaii."

The update has been a long time coming; Facebook has been testing it on a small subset of users since September 2013.

The company added that searching for old posts was the "most important thing" to users who have tested Graph Search. Not being able to find a post that your friend posted a few days ago can prove frustrating.

The search results are personalized for each user, so you can't search for all posts on Facebook -- only the ones that have been shared with you.

The update will gradually roll out in the U.S. on both iPhone and desktop versions of Facebook.

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