Microsoft’s Bing search engine has begun showing users which sites and products their Facebook friends like.
The move, which will initially be rolled out in the US over the coming weeks, forms part of a continuing four-year deal between the two companies.
The function is optional and only works when users are logged into Facebook or have ‘cookies’ on their PC that store Facebook data.
The deal will mean that if someone is searching for a film on Bing, they will see faces of friends who have ‘liked’ the movie on Facebook returned in the results page.
Announcing the move on the Facebook Blog, Bret Taylor from the social network site said the search tool will also provide a more tailored approach when trying to find a person, pushing people who are friends or friends of friends to the top of the results page.
“This is just the beginning; there is going to be a whole lot more to come over time,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said at the launch.
The service makes use of a Facebook feature that allows third-party websites to embed a “Like” button on their pages. When users click these buttons, it creates a connection with their profile.
These connections are then used to create personalised results, which show up in a separate box alongside traditional links.
At the launch, the firms showed an example of searching for a restaurant with results that included eateries Facebook friends liked.
The new feature takes advantage of a 2007 deal between Microsoft and Facebook that saw the software firm pay $240m for a 1.6% stake in the social network. That gave it “privileged access” to social data that other firms do not have.
The two firms also announced a feature that allows people to search for Facebook contacts using Bing.
Facebook, which has come under repeated criticism for its privacy policies, stressed that no private data was shared in either feature.
“This is all information that is public about you anyway,” said Zuckerberg.
