Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Creative Commons/niallkennedy)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the changes were designed to help Facebook users find information based on things their friends have liked rather than finding, for instance, fan pages as the current system allows.

Though not intended to take on search giant Google, Zuckerberg emphasized that the graph search would allow users to find what they need without leaving Facebook.

“Web search is designed to take any open-ended query," Zuckerberg said. “Graph search is designed to take a precise query and return to you the answer, not links to other places where you get the answer.”

The new feature was only available to a limited number of users as of Tuesday and will be gradually rolled out to other users, Zuckerberg said.

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