Google's ability to crawl AJAX rendered content
-
I would like to make a change to the way our main navigation is currently rendered on our e-commerce site. Currently, all of the content that appears when you click a navigation category is rendering on page load. This is currently a large portion of every page visit’s bandwidth and even the images are downloaded even if a user doesn’t choose to use the navigation.
I’d like to change it so the content appears and is downloaded only IF the user clicks on it, I'm planning on using AJAX. As that is the case it wouldn’t not be automatically on the site(which may or may not mean Google would crawl it). As we already provide a sitemap.xml for Google I want to make sure this change would not adversely affect our SEO.
As of October this year the Webmaster AJAX crawling doc. suggestions has been depreciated. While the new version does say that its crawlers are smart enough to render AJAX content, something I've tested, I'm not sure if that only applies to content injected on page load as opposed to in click like I'm planning to do.
-
Google's official recommendation is just to unblock js/css and let it figure it out since it's smart enough now. I personally like to give as many suggestions/clues to follow as possible so that it doesn't get confused.
IMO, the onclick/href hybrid is probably the best for user experience. With proper canonicals set up (so that Google only indexes 1 version and avoids any duplicates), it's also my suggested method for SEO.
-
Thanks Oleg,
The link you sent for the webmaster page had been deprecated since Oct 2015, does your recommendation still hold?
-
check out https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/learn-more#current-practice
Essentially, you should have the AJAX load "onclick" but have the "href" link to the hardlink for people who don't have JS enabled (and crawlers).
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
-
Sub domain? Micro site? What's the best solution?
My client currently has two websites to promote their art galleries in different parts of the country. They have bought a new domain (let's call it buyart.com) which they would eventually like to use as an e-commerce platform. They are wondering whether they keep their existing two gallery websites (non e-commerce) separate as they always have been, or somehow combine these into the new domain and have one overarching brand (buyart.com). I've read a bit on subdomains and microsites but am unsure at this stage what the best option would be, and what the pros and cons are. My feeling is to bring it all together under buyart.com so everything is in one place and creates a better user journey for anyone who would like to visit. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | WhitewallGlasgow0 -
How to get into Google's Tops Stories?
Hi All, I have been doing research for a few weeks and I cannot for the life of me figure out why I cannot get my website (Racenet) into the top stories in Google. We are in Google News, have "news article" schema, have AMP pages. Our news articles also perform quite well organically and we typically dominate the Google News section. We have two main competitors (Punters and Just Horse Racing) who are both in top stories and I cannot find anything that we are doing that they aren't. Apparently the AMP "news article" schema is incorrect and that could be the reason why we aren't showing up in Google Top Stories, but I can't find anything wrong with the schema and it looks the same as our competitors. For example: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racenet.com.au%2Fnews%2Fblake-shinn-booked-to-ride-doncaster-handicap-favourite-alizee-20190331%3FisAmp%3D1 Does anyone have any ideas of why I cannot get my site into Google Top Stories? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! 🙂
Technical SEO | | Saba.Elahi.M.0 -
Specifying Your Organization's Logo Schema Required If Corporate Contacts Schema is in Place?
Does anyone know if specifying the organization's logo schema is required if corporate contacts schema is in place? I have the corporate contact schema in place on my site but not the second one. The site is http://www.cobaltrecruitment.com/ Thanks,
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
New Site maintaining rank on old URL's
Hi I have a new website going live which has a different page names etc i.e. the old site had pages that are ranking called aboutus.html and the new site is called about.php What is the best approach to maintain the rank and also on orphaned pages Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Google webmaster tool doestn allow me to send 'URL and all linked pages"
Hello! I made a lot of optimization changes in my site ( seo urls, and a lot more ) , I always use Google Webmaster tools, fetch as Google Bot to refresh my site but now it doesnt allow me to 'Send URL and all linked pages' check the attachment Thank you
Technical SEO | | matiw0 -
Should we use & or and in our url's?
Example: /Zambia/kasanka-&-bangweulu or /Zambia/kasanka-and-bangweulu which is the better url from the search engines point of view?
Technical SEO | | tribes0 -
"Standout" tag and "Original content" tags - what's the latest?
In November 2010 Google introduced the "standout tag" http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=191283 I can't find any articles/blog posts/etc in google after that date, but its use was suggested in a google forum today to help with original content issues. Has anyone used them? Does anyone know what's the latest with them? Are they worth trying for SEO? Is there a possible SEO penalty for using them? Thanks, Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
What can I do if Google Webmaster Tools doesn't recognize the robots.txt file?
I'm working on a recently hacked site for a client and and in trying to identify how exactly the hack is running I need to use the fetch as Google bot feature in GWT. I'd love to use this but it thinks the robots.txt is blocking it's acces but the only thing in the robots.txt file is a link to the sitemap. Unde the Blocked URLs section of the GWT it shows that the robots.txt was last downloaded yesterday but it's incorrect information. Is there a way to force Google to look again?
Technical SEO | | DotCar0