Today in TechGoogle searches can now unearth your Facebook comments
While you'd have to be quite naive to assume anything you do online can remain private these days, a switch to Google's search formula will dredge up yet another kind of online activity: your Facebook comments. Google uses a complex algorithm to determine what does and doesn't appear in a simple search, and that oft-criticized formula is in a perpetual state of flux. While the comments you leave on your friends' (or enemies') Facebook walls aren't yet fair game, it appears that any comment you leave on a website that you've logged into with your Facebook account can now pop up in a search.
The formula tweak was confirmed today by Google search guru Matt Cutts through a tweet: "Googlebot keeps getting smarter. Now has the ability to execute AJAX/JavaScript to index some dynamic comments." Of course, that Googlebot's new brainpower might not sit well with everyone on the web. It isn't yet clear how much weight Google will put on indexing old Facebook comments, so if the search giant opts to emphasize fresh comments in its newly-adjusted results, you could be safe for now (if you've got something to hide, that is).
Happily, the search engine can't creep into your personal Facebook account, and the change only applies to the outward-facing comment systems that use Facebook as a platform. Since both Google and Facebook have found themselves embroiled in privacy blow-ups in the past, we'd expect that both parties will increasingly err on the side of caution when it comes to keeping all of those personal wall posts on lockdown. Still, it's best to be extra cautious when posting anything online — in our modern hyper-connected era, an online indiscretion is only a search term away.
Matt Cutts via Digital Inspiration
This article originally appeared on Tecca
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