[thelist] Are search engine spiders JavaScript-enabled?

Niklaus Haldimann nhaldimann at gmx.ch
Fri Nov 9 10:31:19 CST 2001


On 7 Nov 01, at 22:56, Ben Gustafson wrote:
> Now, when a search engine spider visits default.asp, which version of the
> page is it going to crawl: The version built with js==true, the other
> version, or both? Is it going to ignore the js==true version since calling
> that version involves a URL with a query string and a browser redirect (to
> the same page)? Or are the questions not even relevant?

Most (if not all) search engine spiders will simply ignore everything 
between script tags, because they can't afford the time, resources 
and costs to run a JS engine to parse JavaScripts. In your case 
spiders won't notice the redirect to the JS version, so I guess they 
will index only the non JS version.

Keep in mind that contents of noscript elements will be usually be 
indexed, though (I know for sure that Google does it). In some cases 
that provides for good search engine optimization possibilities (ie 
put keyword-rich text between noscript tags).

N.




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