How do search engines index cufon replaced text?

[Landitus]

I was wondering if cufon replaced text is search engine friendly,
cause when I disable CSS, cufon text is repeated twice! So, is that
repeated text what Google "sees" and indexes? I really apreciate some
help with this cause it really makes a difference if it is SEO
friendly.

[Simo Kinnunen]

Hi Landitus,

Yes, cufón is search engine friendly. As cufón is JavaScript-based,
search engines see what a user with JavaScript disabled would see
(which is just the text, unmodified). The only difference between a
cufón-enabled page and a regular page is the presence of a few
additional <script> tags.

If you do have JavaScript enabled, but CSS disabled, you'll see both
the original text and the replaced text. While this may seem like a
problem, it is actually an unrealistic scenario because most browsers
do not even allow CSS to be disabled, requiring a 3rd-party utility
(such as a Firefox extension) to do the job. Only web developers do
this, not real users. Screen readers only see the original text, so
that is not an issue either.

Simo

[michael-e]

> > cause when I disable CSS, cufon text is repeated twice! So, is that

Maybe Landitus has been fooled by an effect I notice in Safari: If you
switch off JavaScript, initially the cufon replaced text is still
visible, mixed with the "standard text". Of course this occurs only
once, and not on subsequent page loads. So it is just a "switch-off
phenomenon", irrelevant to crawlers/spiders.

[Landitus]

Thanks for the input! You were very helpful!!!