Charity project for local women's shelter - need help: will Google notice if you alter the document title with Javascript after the page loads?
-
I am doing some pro-bono work with a local shelter for female victims of domestic abuse. I am trying to help visitors to the site cover their tracks by employing a document.title change when the page loads using JavaScript. This shelter receives a lot of traffic from Google. I worry that the Google bots will see this javascript change and somehow penalize this site or modify the title in the SERPs. Has anyone had any experience with this kind of javascript maneuver? All help would be greatly appreciated!
-
I would set up a test first, as i have not used it myself. It may not work on all browsers.
good luck
-
Alan -
Wow, great response. I really appreciate your help. The ASP solution does look sophisticated; I think I will look into that as a longer term solution/more sustainable solution.
Cheers!
Jeff
-
There is a way to do this but you need to be using ASP.Net and is a fair bit of work http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc488548.aspx
These 2 solutions do not remove from addres bar in IE, but do remove from history
history.go(-1);
window.location.href = 'http://thatsit.com.au'
window.location.replace('fakePage.html')
-
There is a way of replacing your page in history, but this does not remove it from the address bar drop down, I think this was a way for old browsers. I am not sure if it is clocking either.
window.location.replace('fakePage.html')
There is a way to check if the user is uing private browsing, but its not easy, you need to check the color of a visisted link. But by this time they have already landed on your page.
I have to say i dont know a way around, if i think of somthing I will get back
-
does it? OK I didnt think it would.
There is a way of making sure you do not appear in the history but i cant remember how it was done.
give me a moment and illl try and find an old website where i did somthingh like this.
-
Alan, thank you. Changing the title does refresh how the entry appears in the browser history. The cloaking issue is what I am worried about - you believe Google will see this and penalize?
-
Ryan, thank you so much for your thorough answer. I appreciate the help!
-
Thank you, Rand. I'll be emailing you shortly.
-
jkonowitch - if you want to email me privately with more detail, I'd be happy to help and leverage any contacts I can as well (if necessary). Broadly speaking, I might suggest that a javascript title change may be less valuable than helping visitors understand how to more fully remove obvious signs in their browser/on their computer.
-
Security and Accessibility are always at odds. The easier information is to access, the less secure it is and vice versa.
You can place your site behind a login which would require all users to register. Google will then have a lot less information about your site and any visitor activity. The problem will then be your pages will no longer be listed in Google's index.
Any additional security really needs to come from the end of the person surfing your site. They could visit your site through a proxy server, clear cache, clear cookies, etc. You can help users by educating them on these steps. There are numerous counter-balances as well. If you are attempting to improve user security, the above can help but it is far from perfect. A pc can have tracking software installed, a router can trace activity, etc.
-
How is that going to cover their tracks? the origianl title will show in any history. and you can simply use in private browsing to hide where you have visited if that is your aim. Gogole may not notice but if and when they do you will be done for cloaking.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is Chamber of Commerce membership a "paid" link, breaking Google's rules?
Hi guys, This drives me nuts. I hear all the time that any time value is exchanged for a link that it technically violates Google's guidelines. What about real organizations, chambers of commerce, trade groups, etc. that you are a part of that have online directories with DO-follow links. On one hand people will say these are great links with real value outside of search and great for local SEO..and on the other hand some hardliners are saying that these technically should be no-follow. Thoughts???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Help needed on HTTPS
Hi Can anyone help me. I need some help with some example of large e-commerce sites going to https. Ideally these need to be e-commerce sites but any large site will be great, so that I can show the impact. The site can be based anywhere in the world, its more the impact I am after. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Is it a good or bad idea (in Google's eyes) to add a forum to my website?
I have an active website with many users adding dozens of comments on the many pages of the site daily. I'm am wondering if it would be good for the overall ranking strength of the site if I were to add a forum to it (in a subdirectory, like forum.mysite.com). On one hand, I can see the forum posts as thin content, which Google wouldn't care for. On the other hand, I see the additional user engagement on the site, which I think Google would like. I know the benefits it can have to the users, but for this question, all I want to know is if this would be seen by Google as a plus or a minus for my site, assuming the forum succeeded in becoming popular. I don't want to do anything that will diminish the value of my site in Google's eyes. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
My blog's categories are winning over my landing pages, what to do?
Hi My blogs categories for the ecommerce site are by subject and are similar to the product landing pages. Example Domain.com/laptops that sells laptops Domain.com/blog/laptops that shows news and articles on laptops Within the blog posts the links of anchor laptop are to the store. What to do? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1 -
Does Google make continued attempts to crawl an old page one it has followed a 301 to the new page?
I am curious about this for a couple of reasons. We have all dealt with a site who switched platforms and didn't plan properly and now have 1,000's of crawl errors. Many of the developers I have talked to have stated very clearly that the HTacccess file should not be used for 1,000's of singe redirects. I figured If I only needed them in their temporarily it wouldn't be an issue. I am curious if once Google follows a 301 from an old page to a new page, will they stop crawling the old page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RossFruin0 -
Why Google scrambles/change our product page titles? And descriptions too?
Here is an interesting issue we are noticing lately: Google is always more scrambling and changing the title of our product pages in the SERPs results. Here is an example: Keyword: "bach arioso sheet music". We are down at the 6th spot, and the shown title is different from what's defined inside the TITLE tag of that page. And that appears often for other keywords/product pages. Why's that? How can we control that? It is hard for us to optimize titles and test CTR and other metrics if Google is showing them differently to the users. Similar issue with the description tag: sometimes Google instead of showing to the users the description tag contents, shows part of the text taken from the page even though the searched keywords are included both in the title and the description tag, and so I can't find justification to show text taken from the page instead... it is quite difficult to understand the motivation beyond all this! Any thoughts are very welcome. Thanks! Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Hidden text that's not show in default view, does it hurt my on page optimization?
Hello, I am developing our new site that will create tabs such as "design", "tech specs", "customer ratings" etc. just like http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15z-5523/pd. My question is, if most of my content is on the 2nd and 3rd tabs, would my content effect my overall SEO if it's not on it's default view? Because, if users don't physically click on the 2nd and 3rd tab, does it mean that since there is no impression of that content, that content will be allocated to half of its SEO juice? Let me know, I would love to know! Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1241 -
Google fluctuates its result on Chrome's private browsing
I have seen an interesting Google behaviour this morning. As usual, I would open Chrome's private browsing to see how a keyword is ranking. This was what I see... Typed in "sell my car", I see Auto Trader page on 3rd. (Ref:Sell My Car 1st result img) Googled something else, then re-Googled "sell my car" and saw that our page went to 2nd! I repeated the same process and saw that we went from 3rd to 2nd again. Has Google results gone mental? PaGXJ.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tmg.seo0