9 replies to this topic

[virusescu]

Hello everybody I recently discovered your site, a great site that helped me already a lot in "my web quest", but I came across a big dilema.
This is my first post on this forum so please go easy with me.
Maybe this has been asked before but I couldn't find any answer. Sorry if so. Please direct me to further reading.

I want to know what happens when a google bot finds a page that uses a javascript redirect.
I have certain pages in my site that open up in pop-ups and in my opinion have a pretty big chance of getting indexed for certain important keywords. That pages don't contain links to other pages, or main homepage. So, I want to use a javascript that checks if the page was opened form my site. Else it redirects the user/viewer to the main page of my site.

How could this practice affect the SERP?
Does the google bot follows the redirect?
Will the ranking of my popups be transferred to the home-page? I mean if i search for my important keywords and land in a certain pop up, what will be displayed in the Search Engine Result Page? The home page (that displayed after the redirect) or the popup itself?
If the google bot follows the redirect, will the pop-ups be indexed?
Will this be seen as doorway pages?

[SearchRank]

Welcome to the forum, virusescu!

Search engines do not recognize JavaScript commands so they would not follow the redirect. Therefore if the only links to your pop ups are JS, they most likely will remain un-indexed.

[virusescu]

thanks for the quick reply.
I didn't even thought my popup could be a problem . I used popups that much, that in time I forgot it's plain javascript

Is the site map a viable solution?

[Jill]

Welcome virusescu!

A sitemap and the <noscript> tag are viable options.

[Randy]

Welcome virusescu !

I agree with all of the above.

The JS popup script is probably going to stop the spiders in their tracks. Our own Torka has provided a link to some code that is SE friendly for popups previously on the forum. I don't have any of those handy right now, but if you do a forum search for "perfect popup" I'm sure you'll find one of her posts.

My concern is different though...

Even if you used the perfect popup, noscript or site map method to get the pages indexed you're still going to run into visitor issues. You mentioned that there are no navigation links in your popups. So even if you get those indexed and get traffic to them, your visitors will have no way to get to the parts of your site that are important to you.

Meaning the parts that will allow you to convert them from visitors into buyers.

So if you go any of those routes you're going to need to give them a way to get back to your main site. There are scripting ways to do that with your popups of course, but you'll want to implement those at the same time if you want to make those popup pages available. Which approach to take is going to depend upon what you're currently using and what your server supports.

[virusescu]

Thanks a LOT for you replies.
@Randy - I was planning to use a javascript that executes onLoad in the pop-up window and checks if the pop-up was opened form within my site.
If the pop-up was opened form another page (like the SERP) I was planning to redirect the user to the main page.

This may sound silly and I see myself kind of "forced" to explain what's with this strange pop-ups I want to use .
Soooo, I have a site with a lot of options in some pages and I need some kind of help pages that should guide an user to what he can do in a certain page. This is what the pop-ups are for . There is a lot of text in many of them, and some are dinamicaly generated and this is some kind of try to optimise the loading speed.

Thanks for the hint.. I will search for the "perfect pop-up"
P.S. Have I mentioned this before? GREAT FORUM

[Randy]

The problem with your onload event it that it too is javascript. On top of that the search engine bots don't "click" in the way human vistors do, so there would be no referrer data. So the popups still would never get indexed.

Even if the onload worked with the SE's (doubtful, though I've not tested it recently) they would get sent to the main home page, not the popup page.

If you're using one of the dynamic, server-side scripting languages I can think of ways to possibly pull it off, and load a page that has the navigation structure into it that anybody lands on. But that's going to depend upon your coding.

If you want to try something like that, are you using HTML, PHP, ASP, CFM or what exactly?

[virusescu]

In the site I use PHP, but the pop-up (at least for a part of them) it will be only HTML coding.

Now I know that any javascript won't get indexed.
I don't want the spider to folow the redirect and then the SERP to point to the Homepage... I want the SERP to point to the page it found the keywords in.
But when a visitor clicks on it he will be redirected through javascript to the main page.

The popups will be listed in the Site map so will get indexed (I haven't looked at the "perfect popup" solution, yet, will look into it tomorow)

My concern is that if the SERP points to a page, but upon landing on that page I redirect the user through javascript, am I doing something stupid? I mean I don't want to get banned or something in google because of un-fair-play attitude.

[chrishirst]

But when a visitor clicks on it he will be redirected through javascript to the main page.

Just like a TP doorway page then

[virusescu]

Thank you all for opening my eyes. I was on the verge of making a stupid mistake.