Searching through Facebook comments can be a tedious task, especially if you’re looking for a specific comment on a post with hundreds or thousands of replies. Luckily, Facebook does provide some basic search tools to help you find comments more easily.
Using Facebook’s Built-In Comment Search
The easiest way to search comments on Facebook is to use the built-in comment search bar. This search bar allows you to search for keywords within the comments on a specific post.
To use it, simply go to the post you want to search and click on the “Search comments” link near the top of the comments section. This will open up a search bar where you can enter keywords to search for in the comments.
For example, if you want to find comments mentioning your friend “John,” you could type “John” into the search bar. It would then highlight all comments containing that keyword.
The search works for names, words, phrases, etc. So you can search for virtually any keywords that might be in the comments you’re looking for.
One limitation is that it only searches the comments on that specific post. So if you want to find a comment John made across all posts, this search won’t help.
Searching Comments on Your Own Posts
If you want to search all the comments on your own posts (not just a single post), there is another option:
- Go to your Facebook profile
- Click on “Posts” in the left sidebar
- Use the search bar at the top of your timeline to search for keywords
This will allow you to search through all the comments left on your own posts. So if you’re trying to find a specific comment someone left on any of your posts, this can be useful.
The downside is that it only works for your own posts. You won’t be able to use this method to search comments on a friend’s post or on a Facebook Page.
Using Facebook Graph Search (Limited Availability)
Facebook Graph Search used to allow for very advanced searching of comments, but its capabilities have been scaled back significantly over the years.
It is still possible to use Graph Search to search publicly visible comments in some cases. However, you may get an error saying Graph Search has been disabled if you try to search comments now.
If Graph Search is available to you, here are some examples of how you may be able to search comments:
- Comments by friends of friends that contain “football”
- Comments from people who live in London and attended University of Oxford
- Comments in French mentioning “vacation”
As you can see, Graph Search allows for very specific filtering when searching comments. But its functionality has been severely limited compared to a few years ago.
Using Third-Party Facebook Comment Search Tools
Because Facebook’s own comment search options are limited, many people turn to third-party tools to enable more powerful Facebook comment searching.
Some third-party tools that allow advanced Facebook comment searches include:
- Comment Search – Allows searching comments by post type, keywords, date ranges, etc.
- CognitiveSEO – Searches comments by post URL and filters by author name, text, date, etc.
- Foller.me – Searches all public comments on Facebook by keyword.
These tools crawl the Facebook graph to index public comments, allowing much more versatile searching compared to Facebook’s own tools.
The downside is that they only work for public comments, so you won’t be able to search private group or profile comments. You also must trust these third-party platforms with your Facebook data.
Keyword Searching Comments with Facebook Publisher
Facebook Publisher is a free social media management tool provided by Facebook. It offers advanced analytics and listening capabilities for public Facebook pages.
One useful feature is the ability to search keywords within public comments on your Facebook page. So if you manage a Page, you can use Publisher to search keywords in your page’s comment history.
To do this:
- Sign up for Publisher
- Connect your Facebook page
- Go to the Messages tab
- Use the search bar to search keywords in comments
Publisher will show you a list of all public page comments containing your searched keywords. You can then click on the comment to see the full context.
This provides a simple way to search comments if you want to monitor mentions of certain keywords people are using to discuss your brand or business.
Searching Hashtags in Comments
Hashtags are commonly used within Facebook comments to mark keywords, share opinions, or participate in ongoing conversations.
You can search hashtags in comments using some of the third-party tools mentioned above. However, Facebook also provides a dedicated tool for monitoring hashtags called Facebook Hashtag Search.
To use it:
- Go to facebook.com/hashtag/search
- Enter the hashtag you want to search (don’t include the # symbol)
This will show you public posts and comments on Facebook containing that hashtag. It’s a straightforward way to monitor keyword discussions happening in comments.
Searching Comments via Facebook Search Bar
Facebook’s main search bar can also be used to search keywords within public comments, with some limitations.
To search comments site-wide:
- Go to Facebook’s homepage
- Enter a keyword into the main Facebook search bar
- Select “Comments” under “Filters”
This will display comments from public posts, profiles and pages that contain your searched keyword. You won’t be able to filter it to a specific person, page or group.
However, this can be a quick way to broadly search for discussions around a keyword happening publicly on Facebook.
Using Page Plugins to Search Visitor Posts
If you want to search posts and comments left by visitors directly on your Facebook Page, there are Page plugins that can help with that.
For example, the Fanpage Search Box app allows searching visitor posts and comments on your Page by keyword, date range, author name and more.
So if you need to find a specific visitor comment on your Page, a plugin like this can make it much easier.
The search capabilities are limited to posts/comments on that specific Page only. But being able to search and filter visitor content directly on your Facebook Page is useful.
Using Excel to Search Exported Comments
For more advanced Facebook comment searching, you can export comments to Excel.
Services like Fanpage Karma allow you to export all your page’s comments into an Excel spreadsheet.
Once in Excel, you can use the powerful filtering, searching and sorting capabilities to analyze the comments however you need.
For example, you could:
- Filter by author name
- Sort by number of likes
- Search keywords or phrases
- Analyze comment sentiment
- And more…
Exporting to Excel provides the most flexibility for sorting, filtering and crunching comment data. The limitation is it only works for comments on your owned pages, not across Facebook.
Conclusion
Searching Facebook comments is limited by Facebook’s tools alone. But third-party apps, Excel exports and Facebook Publisher provide more powerful options.
Here are some key takeaways for searching Facebook comments:
- Use built-in search to find comments on a specific post
- Search your own timeline to find comments on your posts
- Monitor hashtags and keywords with Facebook Search and Publisher
- Try advanced third-party comment search tools
- Export comments to Excel for maximum filtering flexibility
With the right tactics, you can discover valuable insights from Facebook comment conversations happening around your brand, competitors or industry.