Is it OK to have Search Engines Skip Ajax Content Execution?
-
I recently added some ajax pages to automatically fill in small areas of my site upon page loading. That is, the user doesn't have to click anything. Therefore when Google and Bing crawl the site the ajax is executed too. However, my understanding is that does not mean Google and Bing are also crawling the ajax content.
I actually would prefer that the content would be not be executed OR crawled by them. In the case of Bing I would prefer that the content not even be executed because indications are that the program exits the ajax page for Bing because Bing isn't retaining session variables which that page uses, which makes me concerned that perhaps when that happens Bing isn't able to even crawl the main content..dunno..So, ajax execution seems potentially risky for normal crawling in this case.
I would like to simply have my program skip the ajax execution for Google and Bing by recognizing them in the useragent and using an If robot == Y skip ajax approach. I assume I could put the ajax program in the robots.txt file but that wouldn't keep Bing from executing it (and having that exit problem mentioned above). It would be simpler to just have them skip the ajax execution altogether.
Is that ok or is there a chance the search engines will penalize my site if they find out (somehow) that I have different logic for them than for the actual users? In the past this surely was not a concern but I understand that Google is increasingly trying to become like a browser so may increasingly have a problem with this approach.
Thoughts?
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
-
International SEO and Indexing in Country Specific Search Engines
Hey everyone! My company has recently migrated to a new domain (www.napoleon.com) which includes migrating many TLD separate domains to the new. We have structured the website to have multi-language and regions, including regional content, product offerings etc. Our structure is as follows just to give an example. napoleon.com/en/ca/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Napoleon.com
napoleon.com/fr/ca/
napoleon.com/en/us/
napoleon.com/de/de Currently, specifically the homepage version of the USA website is indexing into Canadian Search Engines, and I can't figure out why. It has been roughly 6 weeks since launch. Any thoughts on this? Thank you Dustin0 -
Internal Duplicate Content Question...
We are looking for an internal duplicate content checker that is capable of crawling a site that has over 300,000 pages. We have looked over Moz's duplicate content tool and it seems like it is somewhat limited in how deep it crawls. Are there any suggestions on the best "internal" duplicate content checker that crawls deep in a site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdawson091 -
About duplicate content
We have to products: - loan for a new car
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KBC
- load for a second hand car Except for title tag, meta desc and H1, the content is of course very similmar. Are these pages considered as duplicate content? https://new.kbc.be/product/lenen/voertuig/autolening-tweedehands-auto.html
https://new.kbc.be/product/lenen/voertuig/autolening-nieuwe-auto.html thanks for the advice,0 -
Content Aggregation Site: How much content per aggregated piece is too much?
Let's say I set up a section of my website that aggregated content from major news outlets and bloggers around a certain topic. For each piece of aggregated content, is there a bad, fair, and good range of word count that should be stipulated? I'm asking this because I've been mulling it over—both SEO (duplicate content) issues and copyright issues—to determine what is considered best practice. Any ideas about what is considered best practice in this situation? Also, are there any other issues to consider that I didn't mention?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
Content per page?
We used to have an articles worth of content in a scroll box created by our previous SEO, the problem was that it was very much keyword stuffed, link stuffed and complete crap. We then removed this and added more content above the fold, the problem I have is that we are only able to add 150 - 250 words above the fold and a bit of that is repetition across the pages. Would we benefit from putting an article at the bottom of each of our product pages, and when I say article I mean high quality in depth content that will go into a lot more detail about the product, history and more. Would this help our SEO (give the page more uniqueness and authority rather than 200 - 250 word pages). If I could see one problem it would be would an articles worth of content be ok at the bottom of the page and at that in a div tab or scroll box.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Product pages content
Hi! I'm doing some SEO work for a new client. I've been tasked with boosting some of their products, such as http://www.lawnmowersdirect.co.uk/product/self-propelled-rear-roller-rotary-petrol-lawnmowers/honda-hrx426qx. It's currently #48 for the term Honda Izy HRG465SD, while http://www.justlawnmowers.co.uk/lawnmowers/honda-izy-hrg-465-sd.htm is #2, behind Amazon. Regarding links, there's no great shakes between the pages or even the domains. However, there's major difference in content. I'm happy to completely revamp it, I just wanted to check I'm not missing anything out before starting to rewrite it altogether! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Search Refinement URLs
My site is using search refinement and I am concerned about the URL adding additional characters when it's refined. My current URL is: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm and when someone chooses their specific year, make, and model then it changes to: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm?searching=Y&Cat=10280&RefineBy_7371=7708. Will this negatively affect SEO for this URL? Will the URL be counted twice? Any help would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandLabs0 -
Guest blogging and duplicate content
I have a guest blog prepared and several sites I can submit it to, would it be considered duplicate content if I submitted one guest blog post to multipul blogs? and if so this content is not on my site but is linking to it. What will google do? Lets say 5 blogs except the same content and post it up, I understand that the first blog to have it up will not be punished, what about the rest of the blogs? can they get punished for this duplicate content? can I get punished for having duplicate content linking to me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0