I'm in a bit of a pickle. The company I work for, own and update a directory/calendar/news website for the area where I live.
They want Facebook comment integration with 90% of the pages, like on all the directory pages, news and calendar. The purpose of it is to boost contribution from users, i.e. when a user comments on a restaurant, news article etc. It'll show on their wall that they posted a comment on the blah-blah page, which will be viewable by all of their friends. Hopefully promote more conversation/page views etc.
I've got the Facebook comment box on the pages where I want. The only problem is that the comment box has the comments attached to it (underneath) and they cannot be hidden(1 has to viewable at all times). It creates an IFrame, which Google doesn't crawl. So all of these reviews have no SEO benefit.
I've made a JSON call using Facebook's Query Language to pull the users profile picture, name, the comment and the date/time. Using this method, the posts are hard-coded into the HTML, meaning Google can crawl them, hopefully benefiting SEO.
However this is where it gets tricky, I haven't developed the "like" or "delete" functionality for the hard-coded posts, which means a user can't like or delete theirs, or another persons posts. It looks complicated but I think it's possible.
I was thinking, why re-invent the wheel. The like, delete, comment functionality is built in to the Facebook Comment box, plus the moderation of comments, word black-lists etc.
What would Google think if I used the existing Facebook comment box for the entire Facebook integration, but still used Facebook Query Language to pull the comments but hide them, possible display:none?
Does anyone have any similar experience with this? or Google's view on hidden content?
Cheers.
P.s. American/Indiana/Chicago is amazing. Gutted they don't have Heinz Salad Cream. Or Marmite.
I'm pretty sure Google frowns upon hidden content, and if they figures out It's hidden they may ignore it.
That's what I gathered. I just wish Facebook didn't force people to use IFrames. I'm sure there's a way around it. Well, I hope there is anyway.
[QUOTE=kingzl3y;32802850]That's what I gathered. I just wish Facebook didn't force people to use IFrames. I'm sure there's a way around it. Well, I hope there is anyway.[/QUOTE]It's part of how they know what websites your browsing. Any page that contains a Facebook IFrame they can grab the cookie and check the URL.
[QUOTE=H4Z3Y;32790998]I'm pretty sure Google frowns upon hidden content, and if they figures out It's hidden they may ignore it.[/QUOTE]
I don't see why they would. Some UI doesn't require headers but to Google it would look messy, so hidden content is the only way sometimes.
BBC iPlayer website has a ton of hidden text and I'm sure they have good knowledge of SEO:
[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/386727/Web-And-Graphics/iplayer-hidden-content.jpg[/img]
Ah, I never knew the BBC hide their stuff. I guess there are times where you have to hide content. Screen readers and stuff.
I just got this from the Facebook Developers Reference [url=https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/]page[/url]
[quote]How can I get an SEO boost from the comments left on my site?
The Facebook comments box is rendered in an iframe on your page, and most search engines will not crawl content within an iframe. However, you can access all the comments left on your site via the graph API as described above. Simply grab the comments from the API and render them in the body of your page behind the comments box. We recommend you cache the results, as pulling the comments from the graph API on each page load could slow down the rendering time of the page.[/quote]
Sounds like they know the problem and are just saying hide it
Here's what I've come up with so far. Ignore the ugly code.
[url]http://kingsleyraspe.co.uk/facebook-dev.php[/url] / [url]http://kingsleyraspe.co.uk/facebook-dev.txt[/url]
The comments are printed out behind the comment box,
Oh, I don't know if it matters to anybody. But I wrapped the comments from the API in <noscript> tags. I guess it's better to use them than it would be to use display:none, or text-indent or margin-top:-100px.
Used this Google crawler simulator to see how it /might/ look to Google.[url]http://www.seochat.com/?go=1&option=com_seotools&tool=17&url=http%3A%2F%2Fkingsleyraspe.co.uk%2Ffacebook-dev.php&imageverify=Q5XEF&timehsh=414331534e43493d&submit=Spider[/url]
[QUOTE=kingzl3y;32863960]Oh, I don't know if it matters to anybody. But I wrapped the comments from the API in <noscript> tags. I guess it's better to use them than it would be to use display:none, or text-indent or margin-top:-100px.
Used this Google crawler simulator to see how it /might/ look to Google.[url]http://www.seochat.com/?go=1&option=com_seotools&tool=17&url=http%3A%2F%2Fkingsleyraspe.co.uk%2Ffacebook-dev.php&imageverify=Q5XEF&timehsh=414331534e43493d&submit=Spider[/url][/QUOTE]
Or just use "fetch as googlebot" from Google's webmaster tools.
[url]http://webmaster.google.com[/url]
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