12 replies to this topic

[lizzielu]

Hey there, (as in Peter Gabriel's song)

I was just digging around in Google trying to crack their code (not literally for any FBI agents out there)....just typing in my keywords (which have all but vanished) and trying to find out who is there and why.

Well, after typing in 'internet marketing portsmouth', I found one of my competitors (a very nice person whom I like a lot - in case she's reading this), above the fold, and alas no Harvey Marketing Group. So I checked out the text that Google pulled from her site and found something odd. There's a word there that is not on her page that Google links to, nor in the obvious metatags.

"Hmmm...it's got to be here somewhere," I said, "If Google found the word, I can find it."

I did a Find in her source code for the obscure word and VOILA...

there it is...

in a <noscript> tag...

Upon further digging, she is listed quite well for many surrounding cities and towns, and all the regional words are in the <noscript> tag. (some are also in the <title> tag, others are not in any other copy or tags)

Which brings me to my question...anyone have any thoughts to the credibility of <noscript> tags these days?

Thanks,

Liz

[Jill]

The noscript tag is very handy when you have a javascript menu that the search engines can't read.

BUT...

It can also be used to spam. The average person browsing can view scripts just fine and will never see the info in the noscript tag, but the engines will.

Does it look like your nice competitor has a reason for the noscript tag other than to deceive the engines?

Jill

[lizzielu]

She has a Java site.

And, she is a savvy SEO who truly doesn't like or agree with Spam...

[Nathan Malone]

Hmm, I wonder what her definition of spam is...

BTW, some sites rank quite well for keywords not even on the page if they have a lot of links pointed to the page with the keyword in the link text. The search "click here" is a classic example (unless Google has changed it). A lot of sites have links that say "click here to go to this page" so that is why some sites rank so well for that keyword phrase.

[Jill]

The question is whether the info in the noscript tag can also be seen on the site outside of the noscript tag.

If not, it sounds somewhat deceptive to me, but I'd have to look at it to be sure.

Jill

[Peter]

Is there script that is described in the noscript tag?

If yes,.. then she´s doing an honest job.

If Not, then she is spamming (or at least SEOing very agressively).

But it seems obvious that noscript tags that are there while there is no script () in the page, will be ignored.

Peter

[Jill]

But it seems obvious that noscript tags that are there while there is no script () in the page, will be ignored.

Yeah, seems obvious. But is it true?

Besides, most sites have some javacript these days.

Jill

[Peter]

Yeah, seems obvious. But is it true?

Well,. I'd like to think that the people at Google aren't that stupid. I could be wrong though.



Peter

[Jill]

I imagine most spammers are smart enough to put a wee bit of javascript code on their page if they plan to spam with the noscript tag also.

But either way, I'd still be interested in seeing proof of this.

[icarusthevirus]

Is there script that is described in the noscript tag?

If yes,.. then she´s doing an honest job.

I think that the <noscript> tag is not intended to contain script of some sort, but to contain informative message to people who do not enable scripts in their browser. So how to judge that the content there is spam or useful information?

[qwerty]

The noscript tag is certainly not intended to contain script. In fact, it would fail to work if it did. The tag is only acted upon by user agents that do not run scripts, just as a script tag will only run in user agents that do run scripts.

Its purpose is to make up for the fact that a given script doesn't run. If you have navigation that requires javascript, you should put links into a noscript tag so that users without javascript are able to navigate the site.

In some cases, the tag is used to simply display a message like "Your browser does not support javascript." That's informative, but not very useful.

I judge the content of a noscript tag by comparing it to the content of a script that is present on the same page. If the noscript is intended to make up for the loss of content or functionality caused by the inability of a given user agent to run the script, then it's doing its job.

[Jill]

I wasn't saying it should contain script. It should contain the same information that would be displayed when the script ran. If that is navigation, then it should contain those links. Scripts are for all different things, and therefore the info in the script tag would be different, depending on the circumstances.

It's not a place to put text that would not be seen elsewhere on the page, when the browser does run the script.

[josh1r]

I'm not familiar with javascript/PHP/whatever else this type of forum site uses, so can you guys tell me if a page like this: http://www.italycharms.com/forums/ will be spidered by Google?

Same question goes for this links page:
http://www.italychar.../autolinks.html

Will google read the links within each category?

Thanks!

Edited by josh1r, 23 March 2004 - 11:23 PM.