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Google indexing Facebook Comments behind Iframes

Google is displaying some interesting behavior and is indexing Facebook comments even though they are behind a javascript loaded iframe.

The comments don’t appear in the text only cache but are showing up when you search for strings of text from the comments.

I’ve been searching for a few comments from techcrunch and they are not ranking very well. Certainly not as well as I would expect for such a powerful site.

Facebook previously said that users needed to use the Facebook Graph API to pull comments in if they wanted them to be indexed which resulted in a nice plugin being developed for WordPress.

BY Patrick Altoft AT 10:58am ON Tuesday, 1 November 2011

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+

Comments

  • http://esteps.gr Simon

    Its another chapter in the war between Google and Facebook…

  • http://www.tvrockstars.com/ TV Rockstars

    Does this really matter? Or is it just an annoying thing for searchers?

  • http://www.michaelrurupandersen.dk Michael Rurup Andersen

    Well it has been said at some point that iframes and Javascript were hard to index for the search engines, hence try to minimize the use. So has the search engines become smarter? it certainly looks that way. Which is quite interesting SEO wise

  • http://www.hoodwebmanagement.com Hood Web Management

    It certainly matters if you have a page receiving hundreds of on topic facebook comments… That’s free user generated content that’s relatively spam-free.

  • http://www.otreva.com Otreva

    This is quite interesting from an SEO approach Michael. I’ve always stayed away from iFrames for that reason.

  • http://iseoforgoogle.wordpress.com Akash Kumar

    Yes search engines are getting smarter, Matt Cutts tweeted about this on his profile.
    https://twitter.com/#!/mattcutts/status/131425949597179904

  • http://mysocialagency.com my social agency

    They are also indexing Disqus comments so I heard….

  • http://www.paridhiinfotech.com SEO Positioning Services

    I hope people will not misuse this opportunity, that Google provide the SEO Community. It will lost its value, if the Spammers overdosed it.

  • http://www.ourmanly.com.au/ Northern Beaches

    Mmm, I am in two minds about testing facebook comments for the whole waste of SEO space reason. But … they do help with spam filtering via the auto-real-identity aspect of it all. Any more stories on this theme please let me know!

  • http://news.startpage.co.il/english/ Israel

    No doubt that Google gets better all the time. Facebook and Twitter indexing is essential for Google to be updated all the time. Google also recently started reading through javascripts, previously not scanned them at all

  • http://www.home-theater-guide.org/ Peter

    Thanks for the info… I’ll give it a try.

  • http://easyfacturas.com/ factura electronica

    Thats it, i´ll turn to facebook comments fast enuff

  • http://www.jamiemcgrath.com Jamie McGrath

    Its been a big talking point as social and search meet. With FB comments being so widely use it was essential for them to start indexing the content.

  • http://www.huntersnet.co.uk/offices/york York Estate Agents

    I am interested to see if anyone has reaped any SEO benefits from this yet. I here they are also indexing Disqus comments and we occasionally see people throwing text links into our blog…..

  • http://ahmadkhoirulazmi.com/ Ahmad Khoirul Azmi

    The reason I simply avoid using Facebook comments (after pulling them via FB Graph API) is that I don’t want to give backlinks (though can be made nofollow, but still does have effects) to Facebook profiles. FB doesn’t need backlinks, surely. but If there are a lot of commentators, then there will be a lot of outbound links to FB, and I don’t think it’s a good idea.

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