Search behemoth Google has finally upgraded the abilities of its search bots to index AJAX and JavaScript, meaning the comments you post on any website that features Facebook or DISQUS commenting (and others) systems will be now be visible. Although the development has been taken well throughout the tech community, the fact that the first iteration of AJAX was introduced circa 1996 has had some people questioning as to why Google has only just caught up.
There were methods using Facebooks API to export the comments and render them as text and render them hidden on the website that would’ve given you kudos on the SERPs. However, with the amount of content on web pages becoming increasingly created not by the page owners themselves but rather by the page visitors, the introduction has been welcomed with open arms.
Whilst this will no doubt strike fear in the hearts of people who think their Wall comments will now be a Google search away, do no fear as only the comments you leave outside of Facebook’s walled garden can be crawled. However, if you’ve ever partaken in a casual bit of bashing on any of the news outlets that employee Facebook Comments, don’t expect it to be quite so hard to find.
