Comments on: Does Google Index Dynamic JavaScripted Content?

By: Ken Ray

Ken Ray — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:53:42 +0000

I know that they are scanning js to some degree. I am not sure in other browsers but in Chrome if there is a website that has malicious js, that website will be labeled as malicious on the Google index. Google even breaks down what is considered malicious.

Now I am not sure if the indexer is actually scanning questionable js on the fly or if that js file has been reported to the index. With all the javascript engine upgrades in Chrome I would think that Google would index dynamic sites more throughly.

By: Strangeworld Blogger

Strangeworld Blogger — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:56:20 +0000

An interesting argument put forward as to why developers should abandon the use of javascript. However, if you look at research you would know that the majority of site users do not like to (and in most cases wont) scroll through the contents of a page - but they will click.

Javascript sites allow developers to provide a rich and entrertaining experience - its not just about making the site look attractive. But as with most none xhtml elements this should not be overdone. Also developers should give their users the choice as to whether they would like to take part in these features or just view the xhtml content. With regards the cross browser problems this again comes down to bad developers not taking the time to impliment features that either function correctly across browsers or offer alternatives for when they don't.

I must also point out that i strongly disagree with chicken's option to remove all non-xhtml elements and must ask whether he/she ever engages in online shopping, takes part in social networking, social bookmarking, watches video on youtube or any other form of web experience that would not be possible if we used just xhtml 1.0. For one thing chicken would not have been able to leave his/her comment on this page.

Non-xhtml elements provide the user with a truley interactive experience, as such its about time that search engines stopped trying to be so restrictive and looked for ways to enable such activities to be indexed especially when they use these processes on their own products (eg feedburner). a return to just xhtml would be a return to web 1.0 and this is not something i would wish

By: joe

joe — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:01:01 +0000

Thanks for the article. I have been using js-kit comments on a limited basis and the issue of how this works with the google spider just occurred to me. I want the comments to be spidered because adding fresh and additional comment to a page is helpful. In the case of js-kit (added by javascript which is remotely hosted), this does not appear to be the case.

By: Kalata

Kalata — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:04:44 +0000

I try to use javascript with a Flash which pulls content from plain html files.., since the flash resides on index.html, i need a way to change the nonflash content, so that google sees and indexes it. I use a technique called swfaddress (http://asual.com/swfaddress/ ) which provides deeplinking for flash using anchors, and was trying to make javascript look at the url and anchor, and then load stuff depending on the anchor link (ie. if the user, in this case google, don't have flash installed). I guess the only way to make this happen, while preserving googlefriendliness, would be using a serverside language like php. Any ideas?

By: Greg Bulmash

Greg Bulmash — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:07:49 +0000

@Dan,

I went and checked, and they are showing up now. Furthermore, for the one I checked, the pages linking to my test page did not use that word to link to it.

I'll need to do a second test to see if this is perhaps a change in Googlebot's default behavior or if you're correct and it's that Googlebot can/does do it, but the page has to pass some tests which may take a while.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:43:53 +0000

Both of the words that have been generated by Javascript on the local server *are* being found by a Google search now. I just read this article now for the first time so thought I'd point it out. I wonder if the page just needs to be marked as 'good' before it's allowed or something similar?

By: Can Google handle dynamic landing pages?

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[...] a discussion on the issue of Java and Google, along with a [...]

By: removals france

removals france — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:11:23 +0000

This is the classic Halting problem outlined by Turing -- Google can't really index *everything* that's dynamically generated without running it -- and that could be dangerous. I'm sure some hacker would quickly code up an ECMAscript DoS attack on Google, waiting for their spiders to fall into the trap.

By: IT help south of france

IT help south of france — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:48:38 +0000

i think it's fair to say that DHTML web applications shouldn't be indexed like documents. they have a potentially infinite number of states and the information on these states isn't really aligned with the semantics of searching the web, which is geared towards finding documents.

By: marvin

marvin — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:35:28 +0000

Its ok if search engines cannot execute Script to display the link from document.write(), but i was wondering if they display results from links inside the js sourcecode?

Like ($link="http://www.domain.com")

By: Nilo Teixeira

Nilo Teixeira — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:35:30 +0000

That's really bad news.

As for dynamic content which needs indexing, a simple example is source size reduction by making table template exporters.

For instance, I have a JS script which is given a matrix of values and calculates "row/colspanness" automatically and conditionally outputs styles and the table via doc.write.

That saves some bandwith and it's WAY better than specifying layout and structure directly in code.

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Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:01:52 +0000

[...] I have found an article with an experiment on javascript generated content (AJAX) indexing. As I already knew the Google does not index such content. [...]

By: barneyrubble

barneyrubble — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:51:38 +0000

There are absolutely instances where Google does indeed index javascript content. This is most obvious in backlinks. If a site has a URL string to your site in a script tag, Google WILL index it, and can actually count it as a link to your site.

I won't promote any sites here, but this can be easily verified with a few "link:" lookups using a few SEO websites as your target.

By: Google and Dynamic Javascript Content | Bookmark Bliss

Google and Dynamic Javascript Content | Bookmark Bliss — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:52:28 +0000

[...] In the new age of Web 2.0 development, often times you come across sites that are beautiful to look at and have some fairly complicated AJAX interfaces. Tools like Scriptaculous and JQuery almost make it too easy to incorporate this type of functionality into your your site. However, today I read a post from Brain Handles where they experimented with dynamic JavaScript content, specifically adding text to the page via document.write commands, to see whether Google parses the content. The results are quite interesting from an SEO standpoint… [...]

By: Denver Web Design

Denver Web Design — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:10:43 +0000

Google will probably not change how they treat JavaScripted content because they "have to" or because good content might be hidden there.

For years, they were not indexing frames - as if it was just technologically impossible. Javascripted content is dangerous for them to run, but also may contain a large amount of SEO spam.