When Facebook redesigned its site at the beginning of February; its search bar increased in size and prominence. Many took that as a sign that the social network is getting down to business about search. Whatever the intentions were, it seems to be working according to new data released by comScore.

Between the months of January and February, there was an increase of 10 percent in search queries which is about 436 million US searches in February alone. This is miniscule compared to Google’s 13.5 billion search queries. However, this is a fall of 4 percent for February but then again, it’s a short month.

Still, the fact that search queries on Facebook grew last month is significant as when compared to other search engines; where all of their search queries fell. If this continues to grow, there is a possibility that more marketers may be attracted to PPC advertising on Facebook websearch. It is questionable though.

On top of that, the growth of Facebook search queries translates to the growth of Bing too; they power Facebook web search. There is a likelihood that Microsoft may gain ground in search engine marketing through partnership deals; like in this case and Yahoo! deal rather than taking on Google directly. Not to forget that about half of Facebook’s 400 million users log in daily.

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