When Google introduced Dart, i thought the company had abandoned completely the idea of dealing with the problematic-to-crawl JavaScript code. But Google proved me wrong and showed it is working in both dimensions- Matt Cutts confirmed in a Tweet that the search engine can now execute JavaScript/AJAX codes:

The rumors begun yesterday after many webmasters reported that their comments are being indexed, although the comment engine is based on JavaScript (which is well known for its indexing problem issues). Search Engine Land was the first reliable source that examined and found that Facebook comments are being indexed by Google (Facebook comments are based on JavaScript). Few hours later, Matt Cutts has announced it officially in his Tweeter account.

Meanings:

1.  Blog commenting in comment engines like Facebook Comments or Disqus can now be indexed and therefore have influence on search engine rankings.

2.  Adding JavaScript comment engine can increase the user engagement on the site and add more content value noticed by search engines.

3.  Although i wouldn’t recommend transiting your website’s navigation entirely to JavaScript or AJAX until we understand how good they are being crawled, these kind of code elements can improve the user experience and also noticed (this way or the other) by Google.

Final Thoughts

This is very good news from an algorithmic improvement point of view. Couple of the questions that still left open are how it will affect in the short run and the long run search rankings, as they were many websites that already used JavaScript/AJAX elements and what weight JavaScript comments (Facebook/Disqus comments) will carry?

Google’s search algorithm already was like a roller-coaster over the last year and i wonder what further effects this improvement will make.