9 replies to this topic

[rayjoy]

Are there any SEO issues with using Spry for the navigation bar?

[Randy]

Let me first say that I've never used Spry myself, being a hand coder.

That said, Spry at its core is advertised to be a Javascript Framework. One that gives you multiple ways to present information, including the ability to integrate it with Adobe Air. Given this small fact the level of search engine friendliness is going to depend a good deal on how you choose to implement Spry when building your navigation bar.

The thing to look for is the same thing to look for with any other element that makes use of Javascript. What you'll want to do is look at the actual source code of the page when it's completed to see how heavily it relies on Javascript. As a general rule as long as the <a href links are exposed in the html code, you're good to go. Conversely when the links are written by Javascript or some other client side application it's not going to be nearly as search engine friendly.

[adibranch]

javascript links are now counted and followed though?

[Jill]

javascript links are now counted and followed though?

They can be, but that doesn't mean they always are.

[rayjoy]

As a general rule as long as the <a href links are exposed in the html code, you're good to go.

Thanks Randy - What precisely do you mean "exposed in the html code"

[Randy]

Exposed as in being nice, clean html. For example

CODE

<a href="http://www.somesite.com/somepage.html">Anchor Text</a>

As opposed to the link being written by Javascript like

CODE

<script>
document.write="<a href='http://www.somesite.com/somepage.html'>Anchor Text</a>";
</script>

[Jill]

But even that latter way Randy has as an example is most likely followed by today's Google especially since it still shows the a href.

[1dmf]

So G! will read embeded JavaScript if in the HTML source code, but not if you link your JS file in which would be concidered more 'Standards Compliant'?

[Randy]

It's a question that's open to debate right now 1dmf.

For the last couple of years Google would apparently still add those urls contained in a js sequence if they appeared in the raw html source code, though it was debatable if they would still properly pass PageRank or Anchor Text boosts. In other words, it was pretty obvious (and easy to test) that they were seeing and recognizing the url structure and crawling them. It was not clear if they treated them exactly like normal html links though.

During most of this time if the same js written links were in an external .js file they were basically ignored. Which makes sense if the spiders were not indexing these external javascript files.

More recently some of the Googlebot spiders are parsing and processing some javascript routines. Which by necessity means they need to access external .js files. And there's some evidence showing they're now able to recognize and understand simple js stuff like document.write lines, even if those appear in an external file.

The moral being that you shouldn't absolutely count on the spiders being able to see, recognize and follow links that are only provided via javascript. But by the same token you also shouldn't absolutely count on the search engines ignoring links just because they're written by javascript.

[1dmf]

So how long before those pesky bots start triggering my JS and seing my webform and spamming it?

I don't hide it to fool G!, so don't mind if they can now run JS, the last thing i want to do is start using a CAPTCHA as it flies in the face of Accessibility Guidlines, ok so does using Javascript, I know.

But partially sighted, poor sighted and elderly people have serious problems with those CAPTCHA's, hell I have problems with those CAPTCHA and I have better than 20/20 vision.

Well I guess I'll only have to worry,when the form starts getting spammed, until then G! can read my JS as much as it likes