How much javascript does Googlebot read
-
We have a site where we have certain navigational links solely for the human user. These links help the user experience and lead to pages that we don't need crawled by googlebot. We have these links in javascript so if you disable javascript these links are invisible. Will these links be considered cloaking even though our intention is not to cloak but save our Google crawl for pages we do want indexed?
-
Hi CruiseControl, If you want to see how Google views your website you can download a tool called Lynx, Lynx is a text based browser which is very very similar to how Google's crawler views your website.
-
Thank you all for your input.
-
I wrote up a nice reply then decided to investigate a point and found a nice interview with Matt Cutts from 2010. The relevant quotes are:
Matt Cutts: For a while, we were scanning within JavaScript, and we were looking for links. Google has gotten smarter about JavaScript and can execute some JavaScript. I wouldn't say that we execute all JavaScript, so there are some conditions in which we don't execute JavaScript.
Eric Enge: If someone did choose to do that (JavaScript encoded links or use an iFrame), would that be viewed as a spammy activity or just potentially a waste of their time?
Matt Cutts: I am not sure that it would be viewed as a spammy activity, but the original changes to NoFollow to make PageRank Sculpting less effective are at least partly motivated because the search quality people involved wanted to see the same or similar linkage for users as for search engines. In general, I think you want your users to be going where the search engines go, and that you want the search engines to be going where the users go.
Article link: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml
-
There are circumstances where you are allowed to use 'cloaking' as some very influential websites have done however in your particular situation a nofollow tag and noindex tag would be the 'normal' procedure.
Personally, I think it is a grey area. You are not using the javascript to hide content as such and provided you are clearly not trying to manipulate the system there should be no reason why you would be penalised for it.
-
I would say yes they are cloaked links. I would suggest using HTML links only for maximum juice and to not anger the Googlebot. Serving different content to the user with and without javascript is a no-no. As for your crawl budget - best practice is to use a nofollow tag on the link and a noindex on the target page if you don't want it in the SERPS.
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
-
Redirection chain and Javascript Redirect
Hi, A redirection chain is usually defined as a page redirecting to another page which itself is another redirection. URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(301/302)---> URL3 But what about Javascript redirect? They seem to be a different beast: URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(200 then Javascript redirect)---> URL3 From what I know if the javascript redirect is instant Google counts it as a 301 permanent redirection, but I'm still not sure about if this counts as a redirection chain. Most of the tools (such as moz) only see the first redirection. So is that scenario a redirection chain or no?
Technical SEO | | LouisPortier0 -
Google No Longer Respecting Javascript Titles & Metas
We implemented title tags and meta descriptions for one of our clients using a GTM and some JS / jQuery. It's been working well for months. Rankings started dropping and nothing had been changed. We tore our hair out. I finally noticed that Google doesn't show our titles/descripts in the SERPs anymore. So I double checked in the developer console that everything was working ok, and you can even see our title in the browser tab. Anyone else see this or have any ideas? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | bbarber570 -
How to know how much pages are indexed on Google?
I have a big site, there are a way to know what page are not indexed? I know that you can use site: but with a big site is a mess to check page by page. This is a tool or a system to check a entire site and automatically find non-indexed pages?
Technical SEO | | markovald0 -
When you change your domain, How much time do I have to wait for google to return the traffic used to have?
Hello. 20 days ago, I changed my domain from uclasificados.net to uclasificados.com doing redirect 301 to all urls, and I started to loose rankings since that moment. I was wondering if changing it back could be the solutions, but some experts recommend me not to do that, because it could be worse. Right now I receave almost 50% of traffic I used to receave before, and I have done a lot of linkbuilding strategies to recover but nothing have worked until now. Even though I notified google of this change and I send again my new sitemap, I don't see that have improve my situation in any aspects, and I still see in webmastertools search stats from my last website (the website who used to be uclasificados.com before the change). What should I do to recover faster?
Technical SEO | | capmartin850 -
Location Based Content / Googlebot
Our website has local content specialized to specific cities and states. The url structure of this content is as follows: www.root.com/seattle www.root.com/washington When a user comes to a page, we are auto-detecting their IP and sending them directly to the relevant location based page - much the way that Yelp does. Unfortunately, what appears to be occurring is that Google comes in to our site from one of its data centers such as San Jose and is being routed to the San Jose page. When a user does a search for relevant keywords, in the SERPS they are being sent to the location pages that it appears that bots are coming in from. If we turn off the auto geo, we think that Google might crawl our site better, but users would then be show less relevant content on landing. What's the win/win situation here? Also - we also appear to have some odd location/destination pages ranking high in the SERPS. In other words, locations that don't appear to be from one of Google's data center. No idea why this might be happening. Suggestions?
Technical SEO | | Allstar0 -
How much to change to avoid duplicate content?
Working on a site for a dentist. They have a long list of services that they want us to flesh out with text. They provided a bullet list of services, we're trying to get 1 to 2 paragraphs of text for each. Obviously, we're not going to write this off the top of our heads. We're pulling text from other sources and trying to rework. The question is, how much rephrasing do we have to do to avoid a duplicate content penalty? Do we make sure there are changes per paragraph, sentence, or phrase? Thanks! Eric
Technical SEO | | ericmccarty0 -
301'ing googlebot
I have a client that has been 301’ing googlebot to the canonical page. This is because they have a cart_id and session parameters in urls. This is mainly from when googlebot comes in on a link that has these parameters in the URL, as they don’t serve these parameters up to googlebot at all once it starts to crawl the site.
Technical SEO | | AlanMosley
I am worried about cloaking; I wanted to know if anyone has any info on this.
I know that Google have said that doing anything where you detect goolgebots useragent and treat them different is a problem.
Anybody had any experience on this, I would be glad to hear.0 -
Is use of javascript to simplify information architecture considered cloaking?
We are considering using javascript to format URLs to simplify the navigation of the googlebot through our site, whilst presenting a larger number of links for the user to ensure content is accessible and easy to navigate from all parts of the site. In other words, the user will see all internal links, but the search engine will see only those links that form our information hierarchy. We are therefore showing the search engine different content to the user only in so far as the search engine will have a more hierarchical information architecture by virture of the fact that there will be fewer links visible to the search engine to ensure that our content is well structured and discoverable. Would this be considered cloaking by google and would we be penalised?
Technical SEO | | JohnHillman0