Drop in rankings after AMP implementation because of lack of facebook comments

[guidetoiceland]

Hi, we are amplifying our site, but one of the things we can´t include on our AMP version is the Facebook comment box.

Some of our articles have hundreds of comments on them and we noticed that Google was crawling those comments and using them as a ranking signal (the more comments the better we discovered).

Now we are wondering if these articles would drop if we launch the AMP version without the comment box. As this would reduce the written content on those pages a lot.

Anybody tested this before or has an idea on that would work out? Thanks for your help!

[brettmandoes]

I'd be interested in seeing the research you did showing that Google is using Facebook comments as a ranking signal. I think a correlation definitely exists, and there is supporting evidence for it, but to date I don't believe anyone has proven causation.

The best research I've found on the topic is here: http://buzzsumo.com/blog/social-shares-and-inbound-links-insights-from-new-correlation-data/ In short, it states that some content that is shared garners more backlinks depending on the type of content and where it is shared. You should compare this with your research and see if it follows the trend noted here.

If you're trying to decide whether to move to AMP or not, consider that you could receive a ranking boost as some have, but you could also be sacrificing your ability to convert as highly as you used to.

I like to follow this rule of thumb: publishers yes, everyone else no. We all have to make money somehow and stripping out conversions is not a great way to do it.