• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 17, 2015

Facebook will now allow Google's search engine to crawl some of its members' public data on the site indexing directly to the source, but the deal could signal much higher aspirations for the social site.

Google searches from Android smartphones will now display information from public Facebook profiles, Pages, Groups, and Events. If the user clicks on a Facebook link, they will land on the page within Facebook's app, linking directly to the source.

While The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, calls it a sign that "Google is making inroads in confronting a big challenge – searching inside apps," the deal also signals that Facebook executives finally realize that leading searchers into the platform from a search engine may have many advantages.

For Google, the deal provides more incentive for those looking for information to search its engine, rather than Bing or Yahoo. And it's clear that free traffic will be one advantage for Facebook, because it increases the number of times users will view advertisements in the platform.

Facebook engineers have begun to take a closer look at Google. Jeremy Hull, VP products and services, solutions at iProspect, told Search Marketing Daily in an interview last week that Facebook has recently become recommitted to search after the debut of their search functionality. "Facebook kind of got out of the search game for bit, but found their way back," he says.

Indeed, a search function being piloted n Facebook pages of people's posts within their profile gives customers another route to quickly find recent news. The tools enables friends to search for posts they can already see on their timeline. Here's Why.

Google's search engine dominates the Web, but Facebook clearly continues to make inroads when it comes to advertising. With Google's latest agreement, it could become a bit easier for Facebook to rebound from a slight slip in ad-spend market share.

Facebook accounted for a 17.5% share of worldwide mobile ad spend in 2014, sliding to 17.4% in 2015, per eMarketer. Google's worldwide mobile ad market share in 2014 was 38.4%, falling to 33.7%, a higher percentage than Facebook. The data firm expects the worldwide mobile ad market to reach 72.06 billion in 2015, up from $42.35 billion in 2014.

Overall, Facebook could account for 9.6% of the worldwide digital ad revenue this year, up from 8% in 2014, according to eMarketer. By comparison, Google is expected to lead with 30.4% share of revenue this year, down from 32% last year. The data firm estimates global digital advertising spend will rise 18% in 2015 to $170.17 billion this year, per eMarketer.