Mediaboss Marketing

15 January 2013 Last updated at 13:24 ET By Dave Lee Technology Reporter

Facebook has announced a major addition to its social network - a smart search engine it has called graph search.

The feature allows users to make "natural" searches of content shared by their friends.

Search terms could include phrases such as "friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter".

Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg insisted it was not a web search, and therefore not a direct challenge to Google.

However, it was integrating Microsoft's Bing search engine for situations when graph search itself could not find answers.

Mr Zuckerberg said he "did not expect" people to start flocking to Facebook to do web search.

"That isn't the intent," he said. "But in the event you can't find what you're looking for, it's really nice to have this."

Earlier speculation had suggested that the world's biggest social network was about to make a long-anticipated foray into Google's search territory.

"We're not indexing the web," explained Mr Zuckerberg at an event at Facebook's headquarters in California.

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Facebook unveils social search tools