http://apps.facebook.com currently shows a PR of 8, essentially telling us all that google considers it to be a reliable source of info on the web.

Recently, Facebook announced that they would make their application pages public, or at least, open up the option for developers to make their pages public. So this brings the SEO Consultant in me to ask, will these pages become highly ranked in the near future? Will they become a valuable place for sites to get links on?

A storm of ‘domain squatting’, if you will, has already started on facebook, with developers gobbling up the most highly sought after keywords.

A new application has even launched to allow developers to sell their facebook applications to those seeking to have the right keywords.

My analysis is this:

http://apps.facebook.com/apartments/ will be of no more value as a location for keyword specific content than say, http://apps.facebook.com/the-crazy-apartment-man/apartments/.

Both locations in the facebook directory could potentially be developed with public accessibility, and both could be optimized with some “apartments” specific data.

The only thing I can think of that would potentially limit this value of the second location, is that google may throw into their algorithm some value associated with how far down the directory a page is located. If location site.com/x/y/z/a/b/c is considered of less value than location site.com/x/ , then you may have an arguement in terms of assigning SEO value to the directory names behind facebook. Otherwise, I think the “squatting” may be short sited, and irrelevant.

Any thoughts? Leave a comment!