You know that Facebook comments plugin that lets people comment on your content using their Facebook profiles? Apparently Google is indexing those comments on your site now.
Digital Inspiration illustrates just that (hat tip to Greg Finn). It makes sense, given Google’s continued push toward putting more emphasis on who you are, when it’s delivering search results.
We’ve heard that Google is likely to launch a Google+-based comments system similar to the Facebook plugin, and it stands to reason that comments from that would appear in search results as well.
There’s been plenty of debate over the pros and cons of even having comments. Even a Google engineer was recently quoted as saying comments could dilute the quality score o fa page by diluting its overall keyword density.
Still, with Google is even putting Google+ comments on search results on its own.
Last week, Facebook launched a “subscribe” link for its comments plugin, allowing users to follow commenters right from there.
One positive, on the search side of things, about Facebook’s comments plugin, is that Facebook users are generally real identities, which can help comments to be less spammy, as the profiles are associated with real people, as opposed to anonymous beings.