Sowsearch
Tool Description: A specialist Facebook tool to search posts, profiles, comments, places, events, groups, and public content more efficiently using advanced query shortcuts and discovery techniques.
Sowsearch
Quick Overview
What it does
Builds targeted Facebook searches to help uncover public posts, profiles, groups, events, comments, and discussions.
How to use it
Enter keywords or filters, generate a Facebook search, and pivot through public results.
Cost
Free.
Account required
Yes - a Facebook account is usually required to view many search results and public posts.
Cookies
Minimal
Ownership
Made by sowdust with the initial work of understanding how the new search function works done by D Nemec and Henk Van Ess.
Use in Reporting
Useful for social media investigations, timeline building, event monitoring, and public activity analysis.
What does Sowsearch do?
Sowsearch simplifies Facebook’s cluttered native search by generating structured Facebook search queries automatically. Instead of manually testing search terms and filters, users can quickly create targeted searches that point directly toward potentially relevant public content.
The lowdown: It simplifies the process of finding public Facebook content that would otherwise be difficult to locate through Facebook’s standard search interface.
How to Use:
1. Start with a keyword, topic, or organisation/user. Adjust the filters to set a date range.
2. Once you have broad results, which open in Facebook, you can refine those results by focusing on specific dates, locations, Facebook groups, post types etc.
3. After finding useful posts or pages, use Facebook itself to continue pivoting through comments and replies, shared posts, tagged accounts etc.
Cost
Data Processing
Account Required:
A Facebook account is usually required to view many search results and public posts.
Cookies:
Minimal / none logged during our session on the site 07.05.26.
Use in Reporting
Sowsearch can support:
Social media intelligence reports.
Public sentiment analysis.
Protest or event investigations.
Narrative tracking.
Timeline reconstruction.
Community mapping.
Open-source attribution investigations.
As a real world example, analysts use tools like Sowsearch in event and protest monitoring to quickly surface Facebook posts mentioning a location or event (for example a demonstration in a city). They can then pivot to the original posts to build timelines of activity, identify key organisers, or track information spread across groups and pages.
Note: Because social media content can change rapidly, investigators should preserve evidence appropriately using screenshots, archiving tools, or exports where lawful and permitted.
Capabilities
Limitations
Enhanced Facebook searching.
Restricted to publicly accessible content.
Discovery of public posts and discussions.
Facebook privacy settings heavily affect visibility.
Group and event identification.
Search results can change frequently.
Faster timeline reconstruction.
Deleted content cannot reliably be recovered.
Keyword and date-based searching.
Requires a Facebook account for many results.
Social network and community discovery.
Dependent on Facebook’s own indexing and search systems.
Summary
Sowsearch primarily sits within the collection, discovery, and analysis stages of the OSINT workflow, helping users gather publicly available Facebook content, discover relevant people, groups, events, and discussions, and analyse social interactions, timelines, and narratives connected to an investigation.
Ownership
Sowsearch was made by sowdust with the initial work of understanding how the new search function works done by D Nemec and Henk Van Ess.
Ethical Considerations
Respect privacy and legal boundaries and only access publicly available information.
Avoid harassment or targeting individuals.
Verify information before attribution or publication/
Consider the safety impact of reporting on individuals or communities.
Related Tools:
Social Searcher
Sources
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