So Facebook recently (25th Jan 2008) allowed its application developers to include apps to their website.

What does that mean ?

I’ll try and explain this using a simple example. I once built a light weight facebook application called 2wentysbook. Now I can add that to my Facebook profile or my website

Using Facebook’s latest Javascript library I can run all the Ajax Fb applications on my site. Excellent news except, I have to run the application on my website as an iFrame.

iFrame is an HTML element which makes it possible to embed another HTML document inside the main document.

So what’s wrong with that ?

iFrame is a big no no from SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) point of view. Content within an iframe is not part of that url (mysite.com), it is part of another url (facebook.com). And so a search engine will not be looking at the content of the iframe as an “on-page factor” for the parent url that holds an iframe.

So if my plan was to put the application on my site and get it indexed by search engine spiders, unfortunately it wouldn’t do my website any good.

All the user information example: real name, contact details etc are anyway not shared with me. So why should I add Facebook application to mysite ?

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Tags: Facebook, iFrame, Javascript Library