Thread: Is it true??

I was doing some jquery research for my website. Then I read in a code that website having javascripts are not SEO friendly.

I wanted to know if "is it true"

My website that I am building is in html code, js, css.

The problem with js/jquery is that it is browser based code. A search bot collects the html code for a page. This contains the script code but not the action that the script produces in the browser. If you use javascript menus you should definitely have a complete html site map available to insure that search bots and visitors can find all of your pages. (Some alternative browsers may not support javascript and some people disable javascript.) You can also us <noscript> tags to provide some information to search bots and users without js support.

Originally Posted by wink0r

The problem with js/jquery is that it is browser based code. A search bot collects the html code for a page. This contains the script code but not the action that the script produces in the browser. If you use javascript menus you should definitely have a complete html site map available to insure that search bots and visitors can find all of your pages. (Some alternative browsers may not support javascript and some people disable javascript.) You can also us <noscript> tags to provide some information to search bots and users without js support.

Ohh. And how should I use <noscript> tags.

Do you think a php script like this will work

PHP Code:

<?php
/*SEO OPTIMIZATION */
if(isset($_GET['_escaped_fragment_'])){ /* If Google is crawling our pages */
    $bot = true; /* The bot is here! */
    $js = ''; // Mr. Google doesnt like Javascript
    $pages = explode("&",$_GET['_escaped_fragment_']);$page = str_replace("_"," ",$pages[0]); /* Get the page he wants from the url */
    
    /*Fake our menu for crawling*/
    $links = '<a href="#!">Home</a> | ';
    foreach($pageLink as $i => $name){
        $links .= "<a href=#!".str_replace(" ","_",$i).">".$i."</a> | ";
    }
}else{$bot = false;}
?>

For menus I would go with css based menus, personally. You can find good examples at: Stu Nicholls | CSSplay | CSS only menus

I did find a couple of articles here and here with discussions of javascript menus.

The concern that I have with the script is that it could (probably an outside chance) be considered cloaking. It might get the site flagged for a physical review, but in a worst case scenario could precipitate a ban. Did you write the script or find it? If you found it and others have used it without problem it is probably OK.

I found the script. However, the menus of my website are not javascript but css. Only the tile slider and carousel are in js.
So it means I can use the js.

Thanks for the info provided. I am going through them.

Those sound like appropriate uses for js. I am not against using js/jquery in web design, but there is a time and a place to use them properly. The designer needs to be aware of the limitations.

If you build a site that people like Google is trying to like it too. This is what the recent major updates to their algo are all about. Sometimes they get things wrong and hide some good content from the world, but they are working on that.

I am trying to base myself on css. But for some other function I need to use js. As I read that js is not SEO friendly that's why I wanted to skip js.

Yes, it is true that JavaScript is not SEO friendly.You should use server-side programming languages such as PHP.

Javascript is 100% user-friendly to search engines...there is no doubt at all...You go ahead with this...