It all depends upon how you code it Nethy. If you
force every single user through a javascript routine, it's not going to be accessible. Either for all real people or the search engines.
However there are a couple of ways to make it accessible for real people, as well as accessible for the engines.
One way to do this is to use a normal a href link like is done on every other site, then utilize javascripts onClick event to fire the Ajax routines. The onClick will override the href link if JS is enabled in the users browser, or they'll get the plain page if not. That's the way some do it.
A more sophisticated, although not that much harder way to do it is have normal links and no onClicks at all. Then have your Ajax script capture the click and subplant the href call if the js/ajax routine fires, ensuring the visitor is on a js enabled browser.
It's actually a lot harder to explain than it is to do.
So how about an example from one of the best and easiest to understand Ajax books I've seen out there: Bulletproof Ajax by Jeremy Keith. As part of the book and part of his site he's cobbled together a quick example of an
Ajax web store application that not only works, but is 100% search engine friendly. Go ahead and try it with JS disabled. The only difference you'll see is the page actually reloading instead of just a section of the page being refreshed by Ajax.
Jeremy even makes the source files
available for free if you want to grab 'em and play with 'em. The hijax.js file is the one that does the heavy lifting of capturing the clicks on href's and form's.
