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In this article, we will see how does google index JavaScript Dynamic Pages. Nowadays many people are worried about what Google will do with mobile SERPs. But in this article, we have taken up a slightly different topic, namely Google JavaScript crawling. Our information is based on previously conducted official tests. By the way, you should pay attention to a company that evaluates (paid backlink service) different SEO indicators (in order to improve them) using the best practices of the future 2023 year. On our behalf, we would like to advise our readers on the loopcv.pro (paid backlink service), which can be very useful for all SEO specialists.
The results of these tests show how various JavaScript features (to add more, you can view their full list of features (paid backlink service)) are indexed by Google.
- This series of tests confirmed not only that Google web indexing of JavaScript is possible, but also the ability of the entire page rendering process and read the DOM, thus indexing javascript dynamic content.
- SEO signals in the DOM (page titles, meta descriptions, robots meta tags, canonical tags) are taken into account. Content that is dynamically added to the DOM is also available for indexing. Moreover, in some cases DOM signals are more important to Google than information in HTML that contradicts them.
Introduction: Google executes Javascript and reads the DOM
Back in 2008, Google successfully crawled JavaScript, but in a somewhat limited way. What is clear today is that Google has not only expanded the list of JavaScript types they crawl and index, but has also made significant strides in rendering a complete web page (especially in the last 12-18 months) regardless of certain software program (paid backlink service).
We wanted to better understand what kind of JavaScript events Googlebot can track. We were able to get impressive results, and also prove that Google not only executes various types of JavaScript events, but also indexes dynamically generated content (in other words, this is the process of crawling javascript generated pages). How? Google reads the DOM.
What is DOM?
Few SEOs have an understanding of how the Document Object Model or DOM works. In browsers, the DOM is essentially an API for markup and structured data such as HTML and XML. This is an interface that gives the browser the ability to assemble structured documents.
DOM also defines how to access and interact with this structure. And although the DOM is not tied to any specific programming language or library, it is most commonly used in JavaScript web applications and dynamic content.
DOM is an interface, or a "bridge" that connects web pages and programming languages. HTML is parsed, JavaScript is executed, and the result is DOM. The content of a web page is not just source code, it's DOM. In other words, it's important.
Series of Tests and their Results
A series of tests allowed us to study how various JavaScript functions are crawled and indexed by Googlebot:-
- JavaScript redirects
- JavaScript links
JavaScript Redirects
First, let's talk about testing regular JavaScript redirects, where the URL was presented in various ways. The chosen method is the window.location function. Two tests were carried out: test A included an absolute URL, test B included a relative one.
Results: Google quickly tracked the results. They were recognized by the 301 redirect scheme - the final URLs were replaced in the index by the URLs from which the redirects came.
In the subsequent test, the original page was used, and the JavaScript redirect was included in a new page on the site, with exactly the same content. The original URL was on the first page of the search results for popular queries.
Results: As expected, the redirect was tracked by Google and the original page dropped out of the index. The new URL was indexed and immediately ranked in the same position for the same queries. Perhaps this means that sometimes JavaScript redirects can behave exactly like a normal 301 redirect from a searcher's point of view.
Using JavaScript to redirect users may well apply. For example, if you are redirecting users to an internal page as soon as they are logged in, you can use JavaScript for this. When learning about JavaScript and other redirect methods, keep in mind that 301 redirects are the best way to rank your site, but you can use JavaScript for this purpose (for example, if you don't have access to your site's server).
JavaScript Links
Various types of JavaScript links (written differently) were also tested. For example, dropdown menu links. Historically, search engines have been unable to track these types of links consistently.
Results: Links were fully crawled and tracked.
Standard JavaScript links have also been tested. These are the most common types of links that SEOs usually ask to change to plain text. They included:-
- Functions outside the href AVP but within the tag (“onClick”)
- Functions inside href AVP (“javascript:window.location”)
- Functions outside of a but called within the href AVP ("javascript:openlink()"), and so on.
Results: Links were fully crawled and tracked.
The next test was to test how event handlers like those that respond to mouse movements work. The intention was to hide the URL behind variables that are only executed when the event handler is invoked (eg onMouseDown and onMouseOut).
Results: Links were fully crawled and tracked.
Compound Links: It's a well-known fact that Google can execute JavaScript, but I wanted to confirm that it can also read variables within the code. In this test, a sequence of characters was compiled from which the URL once it was constructed was created.
Results: Links were fully crawled and tracked.