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.
The main navigation is using JS, will this have a negative impact on SEO?
-
Hi mozzers,
We just redesigned our homepage and discovered that our main nav is using JS and when disabling JS, no main nav links was showing up. Is this still considered bad practice for SEO? https://cl.ly/14ccf2509478
thanks
-
Thanks Jose!
-
Googlebot does not render JavaScript
We hear very often about JavaScript rendering is the assumption that the crawler is responsible for the rendering. But that's not the case. The rendering is done by the indexer (from Google Caffeine).More specifically, the Web Rendering Service (WRS), which is part of Google Caffeine. And this is exactly where the second great difficulty lies in the area of JavaScript SEO.
Gary Illyes says: "Also, to clarify, WRS is a subsystem of Caffeine, just like the PageRanker (cos yes, we still use it) or the canonicalization algorithm."
The process flow between the crawler and the indexer:
HTML files are downloaded.
CSS and JavaScript data will be downloaded in parallel.
WRS (Web Rendering Service) (part of Google Caffeine) is used to run JS.
WRS renders all files.
Now Google Caffeine can index the content if necessary.
And that's when Googlebot can crawl new links.
Why is that a problem? For the crawler to be able to enter the content and follow the links, it must first pass the data to the indexer. The indexer renders the content and returns it to the crawlers. Only now can the crawler see the content and follow the links. On the next page, the game starts again. Page by page. (many processes)Unlike conventional pages, where the crawler crawls numerous pages and, after crawling, passes everything collectively to the indexer. (few processes)
This process presents another challenge to search engines.
Regards
-
The only bad SEO Practice regarding JS that I've of is trying to hide the JS files from Search Engines, apparently, Google needs to render a whole page as it indexing it; so blocking any JS (& CSS for that matter) isn't a good thing.
-
Hi There,
JS rendered UI isn't negative, it is however not a good practice also.
You can find complete information to the concept of JS rendered pages and UI on this link, https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/javascript-bad-for-seo.htm .
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Vijay
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
-
Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?
We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this. Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/ Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website. Following is our Technical Setup Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/ Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap. SEO Risk Evaluation We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are. Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain? Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap? Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property? Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO? Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshibhargav_200 -
Will using a reverse proxy give me the benefits of the main sites domain authority?
If I am running example.com and have a blog on exampleblog.com Will moving the blog to example.com/blog and using a reverse proxy give the blog the same domain authority as example.com Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | El-Bracko0 -
SEO Impact of External links in JS tag
We have our JS tag and iframe tag being used over by 100 leading websites. What would be the SEO impact if we added a follow link in the iframe. Would it have any negative impact ? Vivek
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kvivek050 -
Using a US CDN (Cloudflare) for a UK Site. Should I use a UK Based CDN as it says my server is based in USA
Hi All, We are a UK Company with Uk customers only and use CloudFlare CND. Our Site is hosted by a UK company with servers here but from looking online and checking where my site is hosted etc etc , some sites are telling me the name of our UK Hosted company and other sites are telling me my site is hosted in San Fran (USA) , where I presume the Cloudflare is based. I know Cloudflare has a couple of servers in the UK it uses but given all my customers are UK based ,I don't want this is affect rankings etc , as I thought it was a ranking benefit to be hosted in the country you are based. Is there any issue with this and should I change or is google clever enough to know so i shouldn't worry. thanks Pet
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
How does the use of Dynamic meta tags effect SEO?
I'm evaluating a new client site which was built buy another design firm. My question is they are dynamically creating meta tags and I'm concerned that it is hurting their SEO. When I view the page source this is what I see. <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">keywordsGoHere</a>" content="" /> <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">descriptionGoesHere</a>" content="" /> <title id="<a class="attribute-value">titleGoesHere</a>">title> To me it looks like the tags are not being added to the page, however the title is showing when you view it in a browser and if use a spider view tool, it sees the title. I'm guess it is being called from a DB. So I'm a little concerned though that the search engines are not really seeing the title and description. I'm not worried about the keywords tag. Can anyone shed some light on how this might work? Why it might not being showing the text for the description in the page code and if that will hurt SEO? Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BbeS0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
Will using a service such as Akamai impact on rankings?
Howdy 🙂 My client has a .com site they are looking at hosting via Akamai - they have offices in various locations, e.g UK, US, AU, RU & in some Asian countries. If they used Akamai, would the best approach be to set up seperate sites per country: .co.uk .com .com.au .ru .sg etc Although my understanding is that Googlebot is located in the US so if it crawled any of those sites it would always get a US IP address? So is the answer perhaps to go with Akamai for the .com only which should target the US market and use different / seperate C class hosts for the others? Thanks! Woj
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wojkwasi0 -
Does capitalization matter for SEO?
Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin1