Today, upon logging into Facebook, I was greeted by a message that my limited profile would soon be open to search engines, meaning that it could potentially turn up in the results if someone searched for my name. This is quite an interesting discovery in & of itself, as it suggests that Facebook isn’t prepared to rely on word of mouth & PR to continue to drive traffic, and wants to bring SEO into the mix.

But what’s more interesting, in so much as it casts a spotlight on how Facebook notifies users of changes, is that it seems like this isn’t anything new. Over at Search Engine Land Danny has a lot of detail about how his profile is already available via Google. It seems like this notification from Facebook to its users is actually a little late (especially as it seems like this has been the case since July).

What this all means of course, is that anyone with a Facebook profile should (as many have already said) think long and hard about who they want to see it, and what they want it to say about them. But that’s not to say that having a Facebook profile is automatically a negative, in terms of how people perceive you. We recently hired someone via Facebook (and we’re not the only people looking for staff on there), and there are plenty of people using their Facebook profile as their professional shop-window. Just make sure that you think about all of this before you post those ‘hilarious’ photos up there.

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