Add-on commenting systems like Facebook Comments enhance the user experience, but can make it harder for search engines to index content.  Most third party commenting systems leverage javascript to display information and add bells and whistles.  However, Labnol.org reported that now Facebook Comments are being crawled (and ranking) in Google’s SERPs effectively breaking the mold for third party commenting systems and rankings:

Facebook Comments can be displayed in a few different formats, XFBML (Xtended FaceBook Markup Language) and HTML5.  While the report references that Google is crawling comments embedded in an iframe, that specific functionality is not supported for Facebook comments.  We performed some tests and can confirm that many of the comments are in fact showing up for articles.  Here’s a search for a comment on the Raven blog that uses an XFBML implementation of Facebook Comments:So look for Facebook Comments showing up in Google results.  If you would like to give your comments the best chance to rank, go with the XFBML implementation as that type is what has been shown to rank.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: Matt Cutts of Google confirmed this behavior and added Google Can Now Execute AJAX & JavaScript For Indexing.

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Social Search

About The Author: Greg Finn is the Chief Marketing Officer for Cypress North, a company that specializes in social media and search marketing services and web-based application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 6+ years and specializes in Social Media Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn. See more articles by Greg Finn

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