Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Would using javascript onclick functions to override href target be ok?
-
Hi all,
I am currently working on a new search facility for me ecommerce site... it has very quickly dawned on me that this new facility is far better than my standard product pages - from a user point of view - i.e lots of product attributes for customers to find what they need faster, ability to compare products etc... All in all just better. BUT NO SEO VALUE!!!
i want to use this search facility instead of my category/product pages... however as they are search pages i have "robots noindex them" and dont think its wise to change that...
I have spoken to the developers of this software and they suggested i could use some javascript in the navigation to change the onlclick function to take the user to the search equivelant of the page...
They said this way my normal pages are the ones that are still indexed by google etc, but the user has the benefit of using the improved search pages...
This sounds perfect, however it also sounds a little deceptive... and i know google has loads of rules about these kinds of things, the last thing i want is to get any kind of penalty or any negative reaction from an SEO point of view... I am only considering this as it will improve the user experience on my website...
Can any one advise if this is OK, or a "no no"...
P.s for those wondering i use an "off the shelf" cart system and it would cost me an arm and a leg to have these features built into my actual category / product pages.
-
Hello James,
Why do these pages have "no SEO value"? Is it because they are AJAX pages or because you have them noindexed? Or both?
To answer your original question, using an on-click javascript event to send a user to a page other than the URL listed in the href tag is borderline. It goes beyond the risk level I would feel comfortable with on an eCommerce site, but a lot of affiliate sites do this. For instance, all of their links out to merchant sites may go through a directory called /outlink/ so the href tag might look like .../outlink/link1234 and appear to send the user to another page on their domain, when actually the user gets redirected to the merchant's (e.g. Amazon.com, Best Buy...) website. Sometimes the user is redirected from the /outlink/... URL and sometimes they never even get that far because the javascript sends them to the merchant's URL first.
It is not cloaking unless you are specifically treating Google differently. If Google doesn't understand your site that is their problem. If you have code that essentially says "IF Google, THEN do this. ELSE do that" it is your problem because you are cloaking. Make sense? There is a very distinct line there.
The bottom line is if you want to show users a certain page then you should be showing that page to Google as well. If the problem is the content on that page doesn't appear for Google (e.g. AJAX) then you should look into optimizing that type of content to the best of your ability. For example, look into the use of hashbangs (#!) as in:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started
-
1. Google understands simple JS that is inline with your HTML. So Google understands that
is a link to domain.com. You can obfuscate this further and Google might not understand it. I've not seen Google try to parse or execute JS but that doesn't mean they can't or won't in the future.3. Google is very unlikely to spider AJAX. Many AJAX pages don't return any user readable content (most of mine return things like JSON, which is not for end user consumption) and , as such, are beyond the scope of indexation. Again, as in #2, you might want this content to be shown elsewhere if you want it indexed. https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/
-
ok, i am not keen on this approach, the developers have offered an alternative... but again, i'm not sure about it, they have said they can use ajax to force their search results / navigation over my current navigation / products on my category / product pages...
this gets rid of having to use javascript to send to different url... but up above Alan mentions cloaking, which to my understanding is basically serving anything different for a search engine / person... and thats what this will do... it serves up a different navigation to people... and the products could be listed in a different order etc... search engines do not see the ajax...
Is this any better? or just as negative?
-
Are they identical, you say the search equivalent, I just wouldn't treat search engines any different
-
even thou the content is identical?
It is only the way that content can then be navigated that is different...
-
Well then, yes I would be concerned, you are serving up different content to users, that is cloaking.
-
Hi Alan,
i think i may have explained incorrectly - my search page does have the meta tag noindex,follow - it also has a canonical link back to the main search page (i.e search.html) so i do not think any of the search results will be indexed. So my concern is not duplicate content, this should not happen...
My concern is the fact i am using javascript to litterally divert customers from one page to another... its almost like the static pages are there only for the benefit of google... and thats concerning me...
-
Google can follow JavaScript links, unless you are very good at hiding them.
I would not worry too much about the duplicate content, don't expect the duplicates to rank, but your not likely to be penalized for them. you can use a canonical tag to point all search results back to the one page.
I would not no index any pages, any links pointed to a no-index page are pouring their link juice away. if you want to no index a page use the meta tag no-index,follow, this way the search engine will follow the links and flow back out to your site
read about page rank and how link juice flows
http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?
Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Using the word "FREE" in domain name
Hi, This may seem like a simple question but a new client of mine wishes to use a domain name with the word "free" in it. The website will offer free activity vouchers. I couldn't see this being a problem as there a lot of websites that do this although he was told it may present a problem with the search engines thinking the site was spammy. It won't be and will be offering information and vouchers on local sporting activities. I was wondering if anybody could clarify this please so I can give him a more definitive answer to his question. Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | malinkymedia0 -
Does the use of sliders for text-on-page, effects SEO in any way?
The concept of using text sliders in an e-commerce site as a solution to placing SEO text above or in between product and high on ages, seems too good to be true.... or is it? How would a text slider for FAQ or other on-page text done with sliding paragraphs (similar but not this specific code- http://demo.tutorialzine.com/2010/08/dynamic-faq-jquery-yql-google-docs/faq.html) might effect text-on-page SEO. Does Google consider it hidden text? Would there be any other concerns or best practices with this design concept? faq.html
Technical SEO | | RKanfi0 -
Using Sitemap Generator - Good/Bad?
Hi all I recently purchased the full licence of XML Sitemap Generator (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html) but have yet used it. The idea behind this is that I can deploy the package on each large e-commerce website I build and the sitemap will be generated as often as I set it be and the search engines will also be pinged automatically to inform them of the update. No more manual XML sitemap creation for me! Now it sounds great but I do not know enough about pinging search engines with XML sitemap updates on a regular basis and if this is a good or bad thing? Can it have any detrimental effect when the sitemap is changing (potentially) every day with new URLs for products being added to the site? Any thoughts or optinions would be greatly appreciated. Kris
Technical SEO | | yousayjump0 -
Using video transcripts v captions and avoiding duplicate content?
Part 1: After editing a You Tube transcript, I typically re-upload as a caption file (with time codes)...for SEO does it matter whether you upload as a transcript v. captions? Is one better than the other? Part 2: If you upload a transcript (or caption) to YouTube, then post that video/transcript in your blog, wouldn't you get pinged for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | vernonmack0 -
Does anyone use buzzfeed to creat links traffic and increase brand
Hi i would like to know if anyone uses http://www.buzzfeed.com to create links, gain traffic and increase brand awareness. I have signed up for an account but cannot get it to work and would like some help. I can get my content on there but cannot manage to get the links to work I signed up for this account a while back and a friend shown me how to use it but i have forgotten. here is my page http://www.buzzfeed.com/lifestylemagazine some links work and some links do not. what i am trying to do is to publish stories from my site as well as other sites and have the link included where you press the title and it goes to the site any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Use of Meta Tag - MSSmartTagsPreventParsing
We've inherited some sites from another developer that had the following tag: All references I can find to it are from 2004. What is the purpose and is it worth including in pages/sites we build?
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0 -
How to use overlays without getting a Google penalty
One of my clients is an email subscriber-led business offering deals that are time sensitive and which expire after a limited, but varied, time period. Each deal is published on its own URL and in order to drive subscriptions to the email, an overlay was implemented that would appear over the individual deal page so that the user was forced to subscribe if they wished to view the details of the deal. Needless to say, this led to the threat of a Google penalty which _appears (fingers crossed) _to have been narrowly avoided as a result of a quick response on our part to remove the offending overlay. What I would like to ask you is whether you have any safe and approved methods for capturing email subscribers without revealing the premium content to users before they subscribe? We are considering the following approaches: First Click Free for Web Search - This is an opt in service by Google which is widely used for this sort of approach and which stipulates that you have to let the user see the first item they click on from the listings, but can put up the subscriber only overlay afterwards. No Index, No follow - if we simply no index, no follow the individual deal pages where the overlay is situated, will this remove the "cloaking offense" and therefore the risk of a penalty? Partial View - If we show one or two paragraphs of text from the deal page with the rest being covered up by the subscribe now lock up, will this still be cloaking? I will write up my first SEOMoz post on this once we have decided on the way forward and monitored the effects, but in the meantime, I welcome any input from you guys.
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0
