Facebook Graph Search Operators
Collated by Paul Myers
(c) 2018 www.researchclinic.net
Prefixes & adjuncts Time frames Facebook posts
Photos and videos Events Pages liked
Groups People & friends Education
Users' hometown Places Language speakers
Employment Professions Business searches
Relationships Religion Politics
Age Gender Links
How to use Facebook Graph Search
(c) 2018 www.researchclinic.net
Basics, search prefixes and adjuncts
http://www.facebook.com/search/ All Graph searches begin with this
used to combine two or more
searches with a Boolean AND
/intersect/
(e.g. people who are named David
AND come from Berlin)
used to combine two or more
searches with a Boolean OR
/union/
(e.g. people who come from
Berlin OR Frankfurt)
used before a keyword in a search
/str/ (as opposed to a Facebook ID
number)
/str/keyword/stories-keyword/ looks for words in a post
/str/name/users-named looks for a named user
/str/name/places-named looks for a named establishment
find pages related to defined
/pages/
search
specifies that it's the photos you
/photos/
want of a searched entity
Time frames
/year/date/ adds a year of post to the search
adds month (three letters) /year of
/month/year/date-2/events
post date
/day/month/year/date-3/stories/ adds dd/mon/year of post date
/past
specifies past, present and ever as a
/present requirement to a search
/ever-past
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Facebook posts
/id/stories-commented posts commented on by someone
/stories-by posts by someone
/stories-tagged posts tagged with someone
/stories-liked posts liked by someone
/intersect combination search example
/str/keyword/stories-keyword/ looks for a word in a post
Photos & videos
photos someone has commented
id/photos-commented
on
/photos-by photos by someone
/photos-of photos of someone
/photos-tagged photos tagged with someone
/photos-in photos taken in a place
looks for a word in the
/str/keyword/photos-keyword
description
the same searches work for
/videos-by
videos
Events
/str/name/users-named/events Future events someone is
interested in attending
/id/events (not currently working - July 2018)
/events/year/date/events/ Events someone was interested
in, during a given year or years
/events/year a/date/events/year b/date/events/union/
/str/name/users-named/events-joined/year/date/events/
Events someone joined in a past
/events-joined/year/date/events/ (not working - July year
2018)
/me/events-near
events near me or events near a
/place id/events-near
place
/str/place name/pages-named/events
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Pages liked
/likers
people who like a Facebook page
/str/page name or keyword/pages-named/likers/
/pages-liked pages someone likes
/pages-liked/interest/pages/ someone's special interests
Groups
/groups groups someone belongs to
closed/groups-privacy/code/groups/ private groups joined by a person
private groups belonged to by
closed/groups-privacy/code/employees/groups/
employees of a company
/str/group name/groups-named/members finds members of a named group
People, friends and followers
used for yourself instead of a
/me
code
/str/name/users-named specify a name to look for
/friends
full details on someone's friends
(unless friends list is hidden)
code/friends/code/friends/intersect mutual friends of people
another way of analysing two
/friendship/username1/username2
members' relationship
friends of friends (very vague on
/friends/friends
its own)
/followers lists someone's followers
/users-followed people someone follows
/wives
see also /boyfriends /girlfriends /children /husbands
/aunts /uncles /sons /stepsons /brothers-in-law
someone's family members
/daughters /siblings /grandparents /grandmothers
/grandfathers and /cousins. Add /friends to get their
friends.
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Personal connected places
/places-liked places liked by someone
/places-checked-in
Towns, cities and countries
/places-visited
visited by someone
/users-birth-place
/home-residents
Towns, cities and places
/visitors people who have visited a place
/str/place name/pages-named/city/pages/intersect search for named city pages
people who have "checked in" in
/users/checked-in
a place
/residents adds people who live or lived in a
/str/place name/pages-named/residents/ever/ town, country or city
/residents-near residents near a place
/places-in lists establishments in a town
people who were born in a
/users-birth-place
specified place
people whose home is in a
/home-residents
specified place
/events-near events near a place
Language speakers
/speakers
people who speak a language
/str/keyword/pages-named/speakers
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Employment
lists companies that have
/employers
employed someone
lists colleagues of someone or
/employees
employees of a company
lists employees of a company of
/str/company name/pages-named/employees
a specified name
lists companies that employ
/str/name/users-named/employers/
someone of a specified name
companies that employ people
/employer/pages/code/likers/employers
that like a certain page
Professions
code/job-liker-union/employees/ lists people of a profession
Profession Codes
lawyers 112696438745118
Police officers 109396455744864
Investigators 143544082337251
Accountants 112926212054966
Managers 112892498724794
CEO's 112032368815466
Treasurers 112732928742174
Administrators 143418082353057
Actors 113227362021025
Teachers 108464855840777
Trainers 107738079249033
Architects 108031252558282
Civil engineers 131461013563090
Nurses 113599041983855
Social workers 103114063062534
Dentists 119880341359563
Optometrists 112544782094996
Models 106216656075289
Strippers 112231702136450
Sex workers 162282617128863
Librarians 112282248788333
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Business
/visitors visitors, possibly customers of an
/str/place/places-named/visitors/ establishment
people who like a page, place,
/likers
establishment etc.
businesses and establishments
/places-liked
liked by someone
/str/name/places-named looks for a named establishment
/places-in lists establishments in a town
Education
schools/universities attended by
/schools-attended
someone
/str/keyword/pages-named/students/ever/ find people who went to a college
people who went to a specified
date/date/students school or university in a certain
year
used in intersected school
date/date/students-2/
searches
schools attended by people who
/school/pages/code/likers/schools-attended/
like something
/students someone's classmates
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7
Sexuality & relationships
/single/users/ (see also /married/users) search for single people
males/users-interested/males/intersect for gay men
females/users-interested/females/intersect for lesbians
both/users-interested/females/intersect for bisexual women
example - change genders to find straight women, bisexual men etc.
Religion and beliefs
/users-religious-view
specify peoples' beliefs
/str/keyword/pages-named/users-religious-view
Religion Codes
Protestants 106274162745013
Catholics 102144649827989
Muslims 106078429431815
Jewish people 115063718504722
Hindu 109107252447873
Buddhist 114761101868288
Shinto 112268618789811
Atheists 111235122235077
Satanists 109491989070706
Scientologists 103822469656893
Jehova's Witness 114897538527344
Jedi 108069459214854
Mormon 112325998784231
Vegan 263557043786425
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Political views
/users-political-view
/str/keyword/pages-named/users-political-view specify peoples' political views
Politics codes
Conservatives 104082972962342
Socialists 103794206325342
Liberals 114494755234706
Islamic politics 109523995740640
Users' age
/age/users-older/ minimum age
Gender
/males gets only males in your search
/females gets only females in your search
Links
Stalkscan.com Sites that make people,
demographic and information
Peoplefindthor research with Facebook easy.
Enter a username and generate
Graph.tips urls to perform Graph searches.
Inteltechniques
Netbootcamp
Whopostedwhat
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Appendix
How to use Facebook Graph Search
Experienced researchers know that Facebook's search box has very limited and
unpredictable functionality. However, there are tricks that can be used to squeeze a
better search out of the world's most popular social network.
Graph Searching
By formulating a special web address, we can use Facebook's older "Graph" search and,
with patience and imagination, we can use this to perform amazing searches.
These special search web addresses all begin with the prefix
https://www.facebook.com/search/ and are followed by a combination of ID numbers
and special "search operator" commands.
There are two main styles of Graph searching Facebook; a search with ID numbers and
and a search with words (or "strings" in nerd-speak ). Both have their strengths and
weaknesses.
Searching with Facebook ID numbers
Searching with ID numbers is precise and will directly only on the person or page with a
certain ID number. You can use sites like findmyfbid.com and lookup-id.com to look up
the ID associated with a Facebook account or page.
For example, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/zuck.
When we look up the ID number of Zuck we see that it is the number 4.
A graph search for places visited by Mark will use this Facebook ID number and the
search operator "places-visited". The search web address will look like this.
https://www.facebook.com/search/4/places-visited/
Searching with strings
Searching with strings is less precise than using Facebook ID numbers, but more
flexible ("fuzzy" in nerd-speak).
A search for places visited by *anyone* named Mark will use the code "str" followed by
the name and will look like this:
https://www.facebook.com/search/str/mark/users-named/places-visited/
Intersecting multiple searches
Sometimes you'll want to create cool tailored searches that meet your needs. These can
include a combination of factors and involve multiple strings and ID numbers.
For example, we might want to find people named Mark who have visited Boston in
Lincolnshire, UK. If we did this entirely with strings, we might get Boston in
Massachusetts, instead, as Facebook wouldn't know which Boston we wanted.
If we added the Facebook ID number for the UK city, 106646729369602, we would get
the Boston in England. The search looks like this:
Remember to add /intersect to the end of combination searches.
Adding optional terms into a search
Using /union will allow you to add in option possibilities, for example a search for
people named Mark or Tony who have visited Boston.
I have compiled the above list of Facebook graph search operators. Sometimes
they work, other times they are suspended. Please let me know if you discover
more or need any training on how to use them.
Paul Myers
July 2018
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(c) Paul Myers 2016. The views expressed on this site are the author's own. The links do not represent an endorsement.
altered banner image (c) Jan Krömer, used with gratitude via creative commons license
