Facebook begins rolling out Sponsored Results search ads

Just last month Facebook was testing a new form of search ads called Sponsored Results whereby advertisers can show ads in the Facebook search typehead to users looking for a particular Page, app, or Place. Now, the social networking site is making the feature available to marketers that will let businesses divert traffic from each other, as TechCrunch reports.

The latest advertising offering includes paid advertisements related to search queries at the top of results. The Sponsored Results appear like any other results in the search box present on top of each page, but with the word ''Sponsored'' written clearly. Upon clicking, users will be redirected to a company's Facebook page, a move intended to keep users within the site.

The search results cannot be based on generic keywords like mobiles, cameras or games. These will have to be brand or company specific like FarmVille or Canon camera.

Users have the option of dismissing the ad by clicking the close button on the top right corner of the search result. A pop-up then appears with various options asking users to state the reason for their dislike.

This feature was initially tested with a small group of advertisers like Zynga, EA and Disney all of whom seem to be bidding for each others' apps.But now the feature is open to all advertisers. For example, when users search for Zynga's Farmville, they may see results for EA's SimCity Social.Most of the times, the sponsored result will appear above the organic results but in other cases users will see a "top hit" before an ad.

Sponsored Results could let Facebook compete with Google sponsored search results and offsite ad networks for dollars. Advertisers will soon be able to purchase Sponsored Results through the Power Editor tool or the Ads API.