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Facebook on Tuesday launched an advanced search capability for the social network, giving users the ability to conduct targeted queries for people, photos, places, and interests.

The function will be focused on data within Facebook ’s “social graph”, rather than the broader web.

“We’re giving people the power and the tools to take any cut of the graph that they want and make any query they want,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive.

He demonstrated the new search box from his own Facebook page, showing how he could search for his friends who like fencing, restaurants his friends like, or photos of Priscilla Chan, his wife.

He used the latter search to choose a photo for his holiday greeting card, with the photos with the most Likes and Comments appearing at the top of the results.

Mr Zuckerberg was careful to say that the new feature is “privacy aware”, in anticipation of the fears that could arise from people now that their personal information is available in an easily searchable format.

“We take this really seriously,” he said.

He highlighted new tools that allow users to see all their photos and personal details that will be included in search results, and other tools that allow them to “untag” photos in bulk.

Previously, Facebook’s search features have been minimal. Users searched mainly for people, but the execution was considered poor.

In September, Mr Zuckerberg indicated that Facebook would further develop its search capabilities.

“We do 1bn queries a day and we’re not even trying,” he said at the Tech Crunch Disrupt conference, adding that there was a “big opportunity” for Facebook to add features to search for restaurants or job prospects.

Marketers are likely to find the new features appealing. Google has proven the effectiveness and demand for search-based advertising. Combining that with the social network data of Facebook could prove powerful for advertisers, analysts said.

A 2012 global consumer survey by Greenlight, a digital marketing agency, concluded Facebook could potentially capture close to a quarter of the Search market if it were to launch its own search engine.

Mr Zuckerberg said he does not anticipate that users will use the new function for web searches, but if they do, they can use Bing, the search engine developed by Microsoft, “which we think is a very good search engine,” he said.

Facebook’s stock dipped at the first word of the news, then rallied back to its opening price of the day, $30.