Different user experience with javascript on/off
-
I was wondered if the site is serving different user experience when JS is disabled is sort of cloaking
-
Yes, Dan is correct. As long as the intent is not malicious, you should be good. Moreover, it is a common practice where a JS overlay is displayed before the actual site is served. For example, the adult sites and liquor related websites show an age gate page using JS overlay technique for the human visitors to confirm their age before they can access the website but the search engines bots (like the Google bot) do not see the JS overlay and can directly access the website. With this kind of setup in place, there is nothing to worry about different experience being served to visitors and bots. This is definitely not considered, cloaking. Hope it helps.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
-
This is probably not cloaking as long as it's not malicious. Engines are going to have a non-js view by default for the most part, so that is the version they will see anyway. You can check Google text-only cache of the page to see how they are seeing it.
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
-
Google only indexed 19/94 images
I'm using Yoast SEO and have images (attachments) excluded from sitemaps, which is the recommended method (but could this be wrong?). Most of my images are in my posts; here's the sitemap for posts: https://edwardsturm.com/post-sitemap.xml I also appear on p1 for some good keywords, and my site is getting organic traffic, so I'm not sure why the images aren't being indexed. Here's an example of a well performing article: https://edwardsturm.com/best-games-youtube-2016/ Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Edward_Sturm0 -
Javascript is redirecting search bots to mobile
Here is the javascript I am using to send users to the mobile version of my website: This is causing major issues in Bing and Yahoo as the mobile website is the only thing ranking. I'd love any help dissecting this issue. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | ShawnW0 -
Branding in a post EMD/Panda world?
How do non-business websites think about exact match domain names and branding after EMD and Panda? What is an EMD and what is a "brand" when there's no business or commercial brand involved? And does it impact your SEO outcomes? I have a Thailand travel blog which is a personal crusade of mine. I like Thailand, I love travelling there and I like sharing my experiences and knowledge. I don't have a business name, so when I started the blog I just used the best phrase I could find that was available as a domain name - at the time it was "bangkoktravelthailand.com". Late in 2011 I thought this sounded a bit spammy, so I found a new domain name "traveltipsthailand.com" and 301'd across to that. All went well and traffic grew consistently thanks to good writing and some basic SEO, until in late September 2012 the site got 'whacked' by Google - possibly due to EMD, but I think more likely due to Panda and some accidental poor quality backlinks (I posted a reply on another travel site, pointing back to my site, but it ended up becoming 100s of low value backlinks because of the way that site managed it's "latest comments" widget). Since then I've been trying very hard to rebuild my traffic, but it's a tough gig. I am now averaging better than I was in Sept 2012, but nowhere near where I was on trend to be by now. I have a small social media profile (800 Twitter followers plus Google+, Facebook and Pinterest) and I am slowly building some supporting pages on prominent Web 2.0 sites and seeking out quality guest post opportunities. But I still worry about the domain name. Does Google see it as an EMD? I don't use the domain name words at all in my page titles (I use xxx | Thailand travel blog) and I try not to use it in anchors either (I tend to use "Thailand travel blog" or my own name. But I still have a few old backlinks that say "Travel Tips Thailand" and I use that phrase as my brand when talking about the website. So how should sites like mine think about "brand" and "EMD"? Is it an issue or not? Is my domain name holding my site back? I have others I can use like "1travelthailand.com" and "thailand-travel-blog.com" but I'm just sitting on them, not sure where to go. I also have "asiantraveltips.com" and a long term view of rolling this site up with other blogs I'm slowly developing about China, Cambodia and Vietnam. But again, not sure where to go any more. Anyone care to share their thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
NoIndex user generated pages?
Hi, I have a site, downorisitjustme (dot) com It has over 30,000 pages in google which have been generated by people searching to check if a specific site is working or not and then possibly adding a link to a msg board to the deeplink of the results page or something which is why the pages have been picked up. Am I best to noindex the res.php page where all the auto generated content is showing up and just have the main static pages as the only ones available to be indexed?
Technical SEO | | Wardy0 -
Temporarily suspend Googlebot without blocking users
We'll soon be launching a redesign, on a new platform, migrating millions of pages to new URLs. How can I tell Google (and other crawlers) to temporarily (a day or two) ignore my site? We're hoping to buy ourselves a small bit of time to verify redirects and live functionality before allowing Google to crawl and index the new architecture. GWT's recommendation is to 503 all pages - including robots.txt, but that also makes the site invisible to real site visitors, resulting in significant business loss. Bad answer. I've heard some recommendations to disallow all user agents in robots.txt. Any answer that puts the millions of pages we already have indexed at risk is also a bad answer. Thanks
Technical SEO | | lzhao0 -
Is it a problem to have a homepage with a slug / URL ?
Hi, We are designing a web site for one of our clients, and using a home made CMS. I don't know how this CMS has been built, but anyways, in the end the homepage has a URL format which looks like this : www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html. No www.mydomain.com. Is it dangerous for SEO to have a slug/URL directly on the homepage ? Do you have experiences, cases where it has impacted a site negatively ? The main problem I expect is duplicate content (with Google seeing both www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html as being different pages) but apparently the CMS is doing a 302 redirect from the root domain to the URL (I told my colleague it should at least be a 301). Sorry if this question seems like basic SEO knowledge, but I really can't find a definitive answer on the subject. Thank you very much 🙂
Technical SEO | | edantadis0 -
Same image file with different alt text?
I have an image that represents 'widgets'. The image works for more than one kind of widget. I have two pages, one optimized for 'blue widgets' and one optimized for 'red widgets'. I would like to use the same 'widgets' image on both pages but change the alt text to be 'blue widgets' or 'red widgets' depending on the page it is used on. Should I: (1) use the same image on different pages with different alt text. (2) duplicate the image file and have two copies 'red_widgets.jpg' and 'blue_widgets.jpg' and then use each copy on the page optimized for the corresponding phrase. (3) create distinct, unique image files (where the pixels are different, not just the file names) for each kind of widget. This is a simplified example of a larger SEO problem where I have 1 image that can be useful on 20 pages that are each optimized for 20 different phrases. Should I use the same image with 20 different alt tags, or create 20 identical (but renamed) copies of the image, or create 20 slightly different image files (with different pixels in each image)? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | scanlin0 -
2012 SEO/Customer Experience Goals
We are putting together our marketing strategy for 2012 and I was made responsible for putting together the SEO and customer experience goals for 2012. Over the past few months SEO has taken a backseat on the priority list as we have had other marketing goals we wanted to take immediate action on. We don't want to let that happen again. Our sites are rushIMPRINT.com and rushIMPRINT.ca. If anyone out there would be kind enough to take the time, do you see any glaring observations of our sites that need priority? Thanks in advance for any help!
Technical SEO | | ClaytonKendall0