Recent reports from the online social media technosphere have revealed that search engine giant Google is now crawling and indexing comments created by Facebook members. This indexing is not limited to comments made on the Facebook site itself; it rather includes the indexing of web pages that use dynamic JavaScript and AJAX content. This means that even outside social comments created using Facebook’s third-party commenting system will be indexed by Google.

This new indexing behaviour by Google’s crawler is consequent to recent moves made by the search engine giant regarding its social media strategy. Google had recently phased out the use of its “+” search operator in order to make room for search queries related to its own social network, Google+. In fact, comment threads made on Google+ can already be queried with a Google search. Commenting systems are integral to the online social media experience, and Google recognizes the importance of user-generated content. Google is interested in indexing any content that becomes relevant, such as a Twitter trend spreading like wildfire, or content shared on Facebook which becomes viral.