We've just published some tips on the Google Webmaster Central Blog regarding Ajax and search engines. Have questions or tips of your own? Share them right here.
> We've just published some tips on the Google Webmaster Central Blog > regarding Ajax and search engines. Have questions or tips of your own? > Share them right here.
I love the part about building the site for static structure and navigation first and then adding AJAX coolness on top.
One thing that seems to be missing though, on pages that are navigated to via hash/fragments, add a "permalink" link to that exact page minus the hash/fragment.
It can be hard to make the permalink prominent enough so that people notice it without having it in 30px bold text but I find putting a dashed border underneath the word "permalink" with a question mark cursor and explanatory tooltip displayed on mouseover helps. If all else fails though, you tried. ;-)
In that example, a given user can bookmark the hash/fragment URL and even send that URL to their friends and could even put that link on a page of their site and everyone would be happy.
Everyone except search engines that wouldn't have a clue as to what to do with the hash/fragment because the hash/fragment is not being used in the way the standards had envisioned.
But, everyone, including search engines can make use of the static permalink.
Also, if your static/AJAX navigation is implemented such that one starts out with a static page, assuming a static URL is requested but then all subsequent navigation/functionality is AJAX if Javascript is enabled, they won't know the difference. They follow a static link but are automatically immersed in an AJAX environment.
On the other hand, if the client doesn't have Javascript enabled, they just continue on with the static links and functionality.
This applies not only to navigation but on-page functionality as well. For example, font size switching. One can easily set up Javascript to do it all on the client side but what happens if Javascript is disabled? Font sizing is no longer available. Also, if it is all done in Javascript, one often finds pages first loading in the default size and then flickering as they are rewritten to a different font size.
Another option, an image editor. Of course it would be tedious for an image editing application to have to refresh the page after every image editing function is executed but contrast that with no image editing at all? The hope is that by making things MUCH easier by having Javascript enabled, more visitors will have Javascript enabled.
AJAX makes some things possible that without, would be impossible but with every benefit, there is usually a cost. The cost of AJAX though need only be in extra preparation and consideration in the beginning design phase but once set up and if done right, you can essentially forget about it and just build your pages as you always do.
> > We've just published some tips on the Google Webmaster Central Blog > > regarding Ajax and search engines. Have questions or tips of your own? > > Share them right here.
I am in the process of developing a site which will be developed using GWT, due to the increase usability it will give to visitors and in parallel I am creating a pure html/css version (with the same content) within the <noscript> tags.
The html/css is to be used by robots and users with javascript disable like mobile phone users.
In some groups/forums people say that text within <noscript> is totally disregarded by robots.
How do you see the site being crawled successfully?
> > We've just published some tips on the Google Webmaster Central Blog > > regarding Ajax and search engines. Have questions or tips of your own? > > Share them right here.- Hide quoted text -
Hi, good post. Just how far does Google go with this cloaking business? What about sites that allow Googlebot to index them but when a user shows up (after clicking the snippit from the search results) the site requires registration, and no Google cache option. This is a terrible user experience and breaks your guidelines. Wouldn't it be better to sort this issue out by removing those sites first as an easy fix? Other than that great advice.
> We've just published some tips on the Google Webmaster Central Blog > regarding Ajax and search engines. Have questions or tips of your own? > Share them right here.
> Wouldn't it be > better to sort this issue out by removing those sites first as an easy > fix? Other than that great advice.
Detecting that type of cloaking likely has to be done manually, which means a webmaster tools spam report might be helpful.
For a bot to detect it, the bot would have to lie and not say it is a crawler. ;-)
By the way, it is better to not post links to sites unrelated to the discussion, unless you are using easywebstore as an example of the type of cloaking you are talking about. ;-)
Unrelated links are considered advertising and so are against the Webmaster Help Charter.
It's a common enough mistake though so don't feel too badly about it. :-)
Besides, all links are nofollow'ed anyway and links without relevance in this forum seem to get almost no traffic anyway so there really isn't much benefit no matter how you look at it.
Hey would u be able to take a look at my site capecodlesiure.com. I recently had page rank dropped from 2 to 0 just wondering why? Can u give me some advise?
> We've just published some tips on the Google Webmaster Central Blog > regarding Ajax and search engines. Have questions or tips of your own? > Share them right here.
Hello cape! :-) If you go to the main forum http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/topics?... a scan of some of the thread subjects might help you find a thread on a similar problem. If not, you could create your own thread to try to get help figuring out what happened.
I'll just say now that many site lost a bunch of green pixels in the toolbar PageRank so you are not alone. Most often though, if SERPs positions and traffic haven't changed, it is most likely just a cosmetic change but without taking a closer look, it is hard to tell.
In any event, check out some of the other threads in this "Crawling, indexing, and ranking" forum and see what you find.
> Hey would u be able to take a look at my site capecodlesiure.com. I > recently had page rank dropped from 2 to 0 just wondering why? Can u > give me some advise?
> thx
> On Nov 6, 8:43 pm, Wysz wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > We've just published some tips on the Google Webmaster Central Blog > > regarding Ajax and search engines. Have questions or tips of your own? > > Share them right here.
I think I've seen a few Javascript links crawled by Google. Don't have time to dig into logs, but I'm sure I've seen it. I know they're working on it... maybe its a beta-googlebot or something.
Then we're going to have another issue... When G-bot IS finally able to crawl them, is it going to take in tons & tons of duplicate content because we've re-written so many JS pages (at least my company has) for non-JS users & search engines?
I have been thinking about this for the last few weeks. A friend of mine showed me what her teacher called AJAX (which as I'm understanding is more that what she was shown in class). Anyways what she was shown is a really cool navigation (load other html pages into a "content" div on the main page), but then I started thinking of how google friendly that would be (as I wouldn't want google to return results directly to the content html, that is not being displayed inside the main page (that contains the navigaition).
The approach I've been considering is to use php and javascript, but had not figured out exactly how that would work until reading the blog post. Now I think I can make it fly. I've already got a decent html/ css/php site, but as it grows the html/css navigation gets cumbersome to keep up to date. The AJAX approach should reduce that burden (from a maintenance side) as well as less bandwidth and storage usage. Should also make page loading quicker (since it will only load the content and not all the navigation and layout css to re-render:)
Very good blog post, and most helpful, thank you. Mike
> We've just published some tips on the Google Webmaster Central Blog > regarding Ajax and search engines. Have questions or tips of your own? > Share them right here.
> but then I started thinking of how > google friendly that would be (as I wouldn't want google to return > results directly to the content html, that is not being displayed > inside the main page (that contains the navigation).
Exactly. Consider the case of iFrame constructed pages and you have a similar situation although at least with iFrames, there is a possibility of the links which load the various content pages into the iFrame of being crawled normally. The trick with AJAX navigation though is making the links which load the content into the page accessible to search engines. If they are pure Javascript links, it won't work. They have to be, or at least look like, normal links to search engines.
What your AJAX loading system does to those links though during page initialization is another matter though. ;-)
In many ways, making an iFramed site search engine accessible is similar to making an AJAX navigated site search engine accessible which is also similar to making a Flash site search engine accessible.
> The approach I've been considering is to use php and javascript, but > had not figured out exactly how that would work until reading the blog > post. Now I think I can make it fly.
If you have any problems or get stuck, contact me. I've got a development site set up that I'm working on. I'd post a link here but due to various reasons, access is password protected, mainly to keep bots out and because it is in development for a client. You can use the contact form at cass-hacks.com if you wish. Anyone else wishing to see what I'm working on is welcome to come take a look too.
> I've already got a decent html/ > css/php site, but as it grows the html/css navigation gets cumbersome > to keep up to date.
AJAX likely isn't going to solve that problem for you although by using AJAX and forcing yourself to do the things necessary to make AJAX search engine accessible, you likely will end up with a more efficient system.
> The AJAX approach should reduce that burden (from > a maintenance side) as well as less bandwidth and storage usage.
It depends on how much of a given page, whether pure HTML or AJAX created, is generated on the fly or in static files. Using AJAX or not won't really change that.
> Should also make page loading quicker (since it will only load the > content and not all the navigation and layout css to re-render:)
Generally that is true but using AJAX as a transport mechanism means you have to do a lot of things manually that you normally get "free" through regular HTTP requests/replies. For example, you can't just pass the raw HTML from server side to client side, you have to encode it in a way that it can pass through Javascript function calls, which means many characters need to be encoded and line breaks are not allowed. Also, you have to deal with the issue of php having various encoding methods and Javascript having some but neither being 100% compatible with each other.
If you have a long page with a lot of textual content, I've seen an AJAX page actually take longer to encode, transfer and decode. That is not generally the case though but using AJAX does not guarantee faster loads.
Also, there are many things that you get for free with a "normal" page that you have to rebuild from scratch when using AJAX navigation, back and forward buttons are broken, easy linking and bookmarking from the address bar is broken, transfer encoding is broken, loading notification is broken, error reporting is broken, server access logs are broken, site access and traffic analytics applications are broken, the list goes on.
For each of the things that become "broken", you have to provide your own solution so you will always end up duplicating functionality that you wouldn't have to otherwise.
I think it could easily be said that creating an AJAX navigated site that is as functional and as accessible as a more traditional pure HTML/HTTP navigated site is much more work and solves no real problems other than one, being able to keep some elements on the page without having to reload them while being able to reload others.
But then again, the same could be said for iFrame navigation and full Flash sites, they do not reduce the amount of work needed but instead, increase it so be very sure of what your requirements are and what any given solution will add in terms of development and maintenance costs.
I'm not trying to dissuade you from using AJAX, I'm just trying to prepare you for the road ahead.
What about Google's very own GWT Toolkit? How do you make those apps
visible to Search Engines?
(For those not familiar with GWT: Google Web Toolkit takes the ajax
approach a step further and cross compiles Java Code into Javascript.
Effectively you end up with a site completely implemented in
Javascript and operating on the DOM inside the browser. That means
absolutely zero spiderable content).
> We've just published some tips on the Google Webmaster Central Blog
> regarding Ajax and search engines. Have questions or tips of your own?
> Share them right here.
> What about Google's very own GWT Toolkit? How do you make those apps
> visible to Search Engines?
As with most technologies, it depends on how one writes the code.
GWT takes a Java app and converts it to Javascript and HTML and
although I haven't played that much with it, From what I have seen,
any content found to be constant on the "page" would be found in the
generated HTML with the Javascript used to manipulate the dynamic
portions.
On the other hand, GWT seems like it is more geared toward usage
similar to Flash being used as just one element on a page amongst
other elements.
But, just as one can build an entire site using Flash or just specific
elements on a given page and end up with problems getting an entire
site made from Flash indexed, building a site entirely out of GWT
might not be the best of ideas either.
Google Maps, which is one example given for the capabilities of GWT is
not usually used as the entire contents of a given page and GMail,
another example, isn't really intended to be spiderable for public
consumption and is likely spidered in its native database environment
to determine content for advertising purposes.
GWT, as well as Flash, can be used to build entire sites but their
purpose seems more geared to increased functionality on a given page
as opposed to being used for everything including navigation.
I see it this way: one of the advantages of GWT lies in the fact that
the developer can write web applications that only sends DAOs over the
wire. The presentation is handled on the client. Forcing the GWT
developer to design his application to send/receive plain HTML in
order to be compatible with his non-ajax implementation, totally
invalidates that advantage.
> > What about Google's very own GWT Toolkit? How do you make those apps
> > visible to Search Engines?
> As with most technologies, it depends on how one writes the code.
> GWT takes a Java app and converts it to Javascript and HTML and
> although I haven't played that much with it, From what I have seen,
> any content found to be constant on the "page" would be found in the
> generated HTML with the Javascript used to manipulate the dynamic
> portions.
> On the other hand, GWT seems like it is more geared toward usage
> similar to Flash being used as just one element on a page amongst
> other elements.
> But, just as one can build an entire site using Flash or just specific
> elements on a given page and end up with problems getting an entire
> site made from Flash indexed, building a site entirely out of GWT
> might not be the best of ideas either.
> Google Maps, which is one example given for the capabilities of GWT is
> not usually used as the entire contents of a given page and GMail,
> another example, isn't really intended to be spiderable for public
> consumption and is likely spidered in its native database environment
> to determine content for advertising purposes.
> GWT, as well as Flash, can be used to build entire sites but their
> purpose seems more geared to increased functionality on a given page
> as opposed to being used for everything including navigation.
GWT takes JAVA as input and converts it to HTML and Javascript. How
much is converted to HTML and how much is dynamically generated by
Javascript likely depends on the application/implementation.
In the end analysis though, Google, and search engines in general
index what they find at a given URL. If the contents of a page at a
given URL is fully generated dynamically on page load or due to user
interaction, search engines aren't going to see that.
> I see it this way: one of the advantages of GWT lies in the fact that
> the developer can write web applications that only sends DAOs over the
> wire. The presentation is handled on the client. Forcing the GWT
> developer to design his application to send/receive plain HTML in
> order to be compatible with his non-ajax implementation, totally
> invalidates that advantage.
> On 1 Dez., 21:04, cass-hacks wrote:
> > > What about Google's very own GWT Toolkit? How do you make those apps
> > > visible to Search Engines?
> > As with most technologies, it depends on how one writes the code.
> > GWT takes a Java app and converts it to Javascript and HTML and
> > although I haven't played that much with it, From what I have seen,
> > any content found to be constant on the "page" would be found in the
> > generated HTML with the Javascript used to manipulate the dynamic
> > portions.
> > On the other hand, GWT seems like it is more geared toward usage
> > similar to Flash being used as just one element on a page amongst
> > other elements.
> > But, just as one can build an entire site using Flash or just specific
> > elements on a given page and end up with problems getting an entire
> > site made from Flash indexed, building a site entirely out of GWT
> > might not be the best of ideas either.
> > Google Maps, which is one example given for the capabilities of GWT is
> > not usually used as the entire contents of a given page and GMail,
> > another example, isn't really intended to be spiderable for public
> > consumption and is likely spidered in its native database environment
> > to determine content for advertising purposes.
> > GWT, as well as Flash, can be used to build entire sites but their
> > purpose seems more geared to increased functionality on a given page
> > as opposed to being used for everything including navigation.
Thank you Craig for the insight. There is definitely more to it than I
had first thought. I think some of what you mentioned may not apply,
or I may have even less understanding of what I was planning to
implement. I suspect it is a combination of the two. I remember when
frames first came out and how appealing it was to have a navigation
frame (so as not to have to generate all new navigation for every
page). But then there were all the added issues with the frames and
framesets and "landing pages" and targets, that it didn't seems so
great in the end. Then this AJAX thing comes around (using javascript
and css) and the whole simplifying navigation is appealing, but again
it looks like a lot of work. However as I'm writing this I just had a
thought of using the AJAX to load just my navigation into each page
(or maybe php) so I have only one place to worry about updating for
navigation (as opposed to every page). This will likely require the
use of the <base href> or "absolute" links instead of "relative" links
for the navigation. While I'm sure there are plenty of solutions (for
site navigation) it sees that each has its benefits and each has its
draw backs. So I just need to figure out what is going to work best
for me. I also have the less than wonderful position of being more
than just the webmaster/designer at work, but the whole IT/Engineering
department and the website is often a lower priority than some of my
other duties.
Again Craig, thank you for your insight. I will try and get some time
(possibly this week) to contact you directly to view your development
site (Thank you for offering).
> > but then I started thinking of how
> > google friendly that would be (as I wouldn't want google to return
> > results directly to the content html, that is not being displayed
> > inside the main page (that contains the navigation).
> Exactly. Consider the case of iFrame constructed pages and you have a
> similar situation although at least with iFrames, there is a
> possibility of the links which load the various content pages into the
> iFrame of being crawled normally. The trick with AJAX navigation
> though is making the links which load the content into the page
> accessible to search engines. If they are pure Javascript links, it
> won't work. They have to be, or at least look like, normal links to
> search engines.
> What your AJAX loading system does to those links though during page
> initialization is another matter though. ;-)
> In many ways, making an iFramed site search engine accessible is
> similar to making an AJAX navigated site search engine accessible
> which is also similar to making a Flash site search engine accessible.
> > The approach I've been considering is to use php and javascript, but
> > had not figured out exactly how that would work until reading the blog
> > post. Now I think I can make it fly.
> If you have any problems or get stuck, contact me. I've got a
> development site set up that I'm working on. I'd post a link here but
> due to various reasons, access is password protected, mainly to keep
> bots out and because it is in development for a client. You can use
> the contact form at cass-hacks.com if you wish. Anyone else wishing
> to see what I'm working on is welcome to come take a look too.
> > I've already got a decent html/
> > css/php site, but as it grows the html/css navigation gets cumbersome
> > to keep up to date.
> AJAX likely isn't going to solve that problem for you although by
> using AJAX and forcing yourself to do the things necessary to make
> AJAX search engine accessible, you likely will end up with a more
> efficient system.
> > The AJAX approach should reduce that burden (from
> > a maintenance side) as well as less bandwidth and storage usage.
> It depends on how much of a given page, whether pure HTML or AJAX
> created, is generated on the fly or in static files. Using AJAX or
> not won't really change that.
> > Should also make page loading quicker (since it will only load the
> > content and not all the navigation and layout css to re-render:)
> Generally that is true but using AJAX as a transport mechanism means
> you have to do a lot of things manually that you normally get "free"
> through regular HTTP requests/replies. For example, you can't just
> pass the raw HTML from server side to client side, you have to encode
> it in a way that it can pass through Javascript function calls, which
> means many characters need to be encoded and line breaks are not
> allowed. Also, you have to deal with the issue of php having various
> encoding methods and Javascript having some but neither being 100%
> compatible with each other.
> If you have a long page with a lot of textual content, I've seen an
> AJAX page actually take longer to encode, transfer and decode. That
> is not generally the case though but using AJAX does not guarantee
> faster loads.
> Also, there are many things that you get for free with a "normal" page
> that you have to rebuild from scratch when using AJAX navigation, back
> and forward buttons are broken, easy linking and bookmarking from the
> address bar is broken, transfer encoding is broken, loading
> notification is broken, error reporting is broken, server access logs
> are broken, site access and traffic analytics applications are broken,
> the list goes on.
> For each of the things that become "broken", you have to provide your
> own solution so you will always end up duplicating functionality that
> you wouldn't have to otherwise.
> I think it could easily be said that creating an AJAX navigated site
> that is as functional and as accessible as a more traditional pure
> HTML/HTTP navigated site is much more work and solves no real problems
> other than one, being able to keep some elements on the page without
> having to reload them while being able to reload others.
> But then again, the same could be said for iFrame navigation and full
> Flash sites, they do not reduce the amount of work needed but instead,
> increase it so be very sure of what your requirements are and what any
> given solution will add in terms of development and maintenance costs.
> I'm not trying to dissuade you from using AJAX, I'm just trying to
> prepare you for the road ahead.
I wouldn't call it insight, I'd call it learning the hard way. :-()
> There is definitely more to it than I
> had first thought.
That goes for you and me both. I started out knowing about a couple
of the issues involved and having ideas as to how to deal with them
but as I "fixed" somethings broken by Ajax, I had to then fix other
things that were broken by my previous fixes. Then I had to deal with
IE. :-()
> I think some of what you mentioned may not apply,
> or I may have even less understanding of what I was planning to
> implement.
Very likely some of it doesn't apply. Each and every application is
different.
> I suspect it is a combination of the two. I remember when
> frames first came out and how appealing it was to have a navigation
> frame (so as not to have to generate all new navigation for every
> page).
Yep.
> But then there were all the added issues with the frames and
> framesets and "landing pages" and targets, that it didn't seems so
> great in the end.
Yep. :-(
> Then this AJAX thing comes around (using javascript
> and css) and the whole simplifying navigation is appealing, but again
> it looks like a lot of work.
I'd say that it is only slightly more work than making an iFrame site
as search engine friendly as it can be but at the same time, an AJAX
navigated site can be made much more search engine friendly than an
iFrame site, surprisingly enough.
> However as I'm writing this I just had a
> thought of using the AJAX to load just my navigation into each page
> (or maybe php) so I have only one place to worry about updating for
> navigation (as opposed to every page).
Ah, so you don't need to do the navigation in AJAX, you just want to
LOAD the navigation in AJAX. That's a horse of a different color.
> This will likely require the
> use of the <base href> or "absolute" links instead of "relative" links
> for the navigation.
Not really, although it depends on how you do it. If all you want is
to centralize your navigation into a single file for easy editing and
maintenance, I use php, put the menu with some switches to determine
how it is displayed into a separate file that you use include() on to
pull it into the content stream. Then you can use something like
href="http://<?php echo $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] ?>/some-dir/some-
page.html" and you will automagically have your absolute linking at no
extra cost.
> While I'm sure there are plenty of solutions (for
> site navigation) it sees that each has its benefits and each has its
> draw backs.
That's ALWAYS the case. You don't get something for nothing. :-()
> So I just need to figure out what is going to work best
> for me. I also have the less than wonderful position of being more
> than just the webmaster/designer at work, but the whole IT/Engineering
> department and the website is often a lower priority than some of my
> other duties.
Join the club, Chief cook and bottle washer, that's me too! :-()
> Again Craig, thank you for your insight. I will try and get some time
> (possibly this week) to contact you directly to view your development
> site (Thank you for offering).
Let me know if I can help out at all. I've got lots of code I can
give you to play with although I doubt any of it would work directly
for your exact situation, as it is all pretty much customized to each
application, but I could help you modify anything as needed as well.
Are there still humans that disallow javascript on their browser
around?
Is the idea here that Ajax and Javascript are more for applications
than for content, and that only content should be indexed and served
to users? That is interesting because this narrows down "the world's
information" (as in organize the world's information and make it
useful) to static content. This can either be the right solution, or
not... hmmmm..
> I wouldn't call it insight, I'd call it learning the hard way. :-()
> > There is definitely more to it than I
> > had first thought.
> That goes for you and me both. I started out knowing about a couple
> of the issues involved and having ideas as to how to deal with them
> but as I "fixed" somethings broken by Ajax, I had to then fix other
> things that were broken by my previous fixes. Then I had to deal with
> IE. :-()
> > I think some of what you mentioned may not apply,
> > or I may have even less understanding of what I was planning to
> > implement.
> Very likely some of it doesn't apply. Each and every application is
> different.
> > I suspect it is a combination of the two. I remember when
> > frames first came out and how appealing it was to have a navigation
> > frame (so as not to have to generate all new navigation for every
> > page).
> Yep.
> > But then there were all the added issues with the frames and
> > framesets and "landing pages" and targets, that it didn't seems so
> > great in the end.
> Yep. :-(
> > Then this AJAX thing comes around (using javascript
> > and css) and the whole simplifying navigation is appealing, but again
> > it looks like a lot of work.
> I'd say that it is only slightly more work than making an iFrame site
> as search engine friendly as it can be but at the same time, an AJAX
> navigated site can be made much more search engine friendly than an
> iFrame site, surprisingly enough.
> > However as I'm writing this I just had a
> > thought of using the AJAX to load just my navigation into each page
> > (or maybe php) so I have only one place to worry about updating for
> > navigation (as opposed to every page).
> Ah, so you don't need to do the navigation in AJAX, you just want to
> LOAD the navigation in AJAX. That's a horse of a different color.
> > This will likely require the
> > use of the <base href> or "absolute" links instead of "relative" links
> > for the navigation.
> Not really, although it depends on how you do it. If all you want is
> to centralize your navigation into a single file for easy editing and
> maintenance, I use php, put the menu with some switches to determine
> how it is displayed into a separate file that you use include() on to
> pull it into the content stream. Then you can use something like
> href="http://<?php echo $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] ?>/some-dir/some-
> page.html" and you will automagically have your absolute linking at no
> extra cost.
> > While I'm sure there are plenty of solutions (for
> > site navigation) it sees that each has its benefits and each has its
> > draw backs.
> That's ALWAYS the case. You don't get something for nothing. :-()
> > So I just need to figure out what is going to work best
> > for me. I also have the less than wonderful position of being more
> > than just the webmaster/designer at work, but the whole IT/Engineering
> > department and the website is often a lower priority than some of my
> > other duties.
> Join the club, Chief cook and bottle washer, that's me too! :-()
> > Again Craig, thank you for your insight. I will try and get some time
> > (possibly this week) to contact you directly to view your development
> > site (Thank you for offering).
> Let me know if I can help out at all. I've got lots of code I can
> give you to play with although I doubt any of it would work directly
> for your exact situation, as it is all pretty much customized to each
> application, but I could help you modify anything as needed as well.
> Are there still humans that disallow javascript on their browser
> around?
Not as many as there used to be. Across all the sites and servers I
maintain, I see an average of almost 2% with Javascript disabled.
On the other hand, I see 12% to 18% with Flash disabled or refusing to
install it. :-()
> Is the idea here that Ajax and Javascript are more for applications
> than for content, and that only content should be indexed and served
> to users?
That is an interesting way to put it but puts it rather well. Although
I would say something more like, AJAX and Javascript being more for
user interaction and capabilities for user interaction being difficult
for search engines to index.
> That is interesting because this narrows down "the world's
> information" (as in organize the world's information and make it
> useful) to static content.
There in lies the rub, how to present static content to those who need
static while presenting dynamic to those who can use it.
> This can either be the right solution, or
> not... hmmmm..
It's all in the implementation. It is just like Flash is pretty much
a search engine black hole the way most sites use and implement it
while at the same time, it can almost just as easily be indexed and
return in search results as a static html page, assuming the site is
implemented correctly.
As it is with most things, it is not the tools you use but how you use
them that makes the difference.
> > Are there still humans that disallow javascript on their browser
> > around?
> Not as many as there used to be. Across all the sites and servers I
> maintain, I see an average of almost 2% with Javascript disabled.
> On the other hand, I see 12% to 18% with Flash disabled or refusing to
> install it. :-()
> > Is the idea here that Ajax and Javascript are more for applications
> > than for content, and that only content should be indexed and served
> > to users?
> That is an interesting way to put it but puts it rather well. Although
> I would say something more like, AJAX and Javascript being more for
> user interaction and capabilities for user interaction being difficult
> for search engines to index.
> > That is interesting because this narrows down "the world's
> > information" (as in organize the world's information and make it
> > useful) to static content.
> There in lies the rub, how to present static content to those who need
> static while presenting dynamic to those who can use it.
> > This can either be the right solution, or
> > not... hmmmm..
> It's all in the implementation. It is just like Flash is pretty much
> a search engine black hole the way most sites use and implement it
> while at the same time, it can almost just as easily be indexed and
> return in search results as a static html page, assuming the site is
> implemented correctly.
> As it is with most things, it is not the tools you use but how you use
> them that makes the difference.
Seriously though,I just like using doing stuff with things that they
weren't designed to do and I've been playing with "AJAX" almost since
Microsoft came out with the XMLHTTPRequest Javascript object although
of course no one called it AJAX then, in fact most people didn't even
know about XMLHTTPRequest until "AJAX" became a popular buzzword.
As an aside, you can tell who are Google employees, here abouts known
as "Googlers", by their having a "G" in a blue box next to their name
like Wysz above who started this thread.
