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Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

developers.google.com

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Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#31

Post by onetimeaccount1 »

sharkweek wrote: post #16

SEO consultant here (yeah, yeah). Please, still in 2019, be careful with JavaScript unless you're willing to deal with a lot of uncertainty. Google routinely says how things are supposed to work, but there are plenty of examples where their crawlers act inconsistent to public statements. To be clear, probably not Googlebot's fault though; we as a species do a lot of weird things when building websites. Just finished…

Bing Mobile Friendliness Test correctly renders JS pages. Fetch as BingBot does not currently. I logged a support request through Bing Webmaster and got a reply that their engineering team is working on it, so I would expect Bing to crawl JS sites just like Google in the near future.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#33

Post by hazz99 »

NullPrefix wrote: post #25
sharkweek wrote: post #16

SEO consultant here (yeah, yeah). Please, still in 2019, be careful with JavaScript unless you're willing to deal with a lot of uncertainty. Google routinely says how things are supposed to work, but there are plenty of examples where their crawlers act inconsistent to public statements. To be clear, probably not Googlebot's fault though; we as a species do a lot of weird things when building websites. Just finished…

> Server side render fixed a lot of this and rankings/traffic jumped. Good, they should just delist client side rendered web pages.

Why? I enjoy writing client-side SPAs, and I can pump out a better UI/UX must faster than I could otherwise.

My users don't care how I build it, just that the site works and is enjoyable to use.

If I need server-side rendering I'll still write it with a client-side rendered (e.g. React), but tack on server-side rendering at the end.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#34

Post by jotto »

rayshan wrote: post #26

I echo what others like @sharkweek are saying - Google has been saying that they index JavaScript for quite a while now. At I/O 2019 they said the crawler should be on the latest Chromium codebase that supports all modern JavaScript features. I built some test cases [0] to see if this is true, and just couldn't get Google to index content inserted via JavaScript. For example, scroll down to the Popover button test ca…

I can confirm that they do not parse low ranking JavaScript sites, but they will parse higher ranking JavaScript sites.

Bots aside (Twitter and Slack still don't parse JS), it is still in your best interest to server-side render or pre-render a JavaScript site. The time-to-first-paint difference always starts small, but as you add features the JS apps become so bloated you'd be better off starting over with a server-side rendered HTML app.

(I am the creator of https://www.prerender.cloud/)

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#35

Post by irq11 »

cameronbrown wrote: post #21
irq11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, would welcome a force with the size and influence of Google telling devs to cut the Javascript crap. To me, it’s like violating the conditional rendering rule: there are plausible reasons to want to do it, but Google is right to push back on it. It’s not as if totally legitimate websites don’t have reasonable technical alternatives here.

> I, for one, would welcome a force with the size and influence of Google telling devs to cut the JavaScript crap. Wasn't this basically AMP though? The solution to the monster web developers were creating?

No, that was a big ol’ web cache.

The solution to this is: “you have one year to make your webpages readable by the googlebot without javascript. Have a nice day.”

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#36

Post by NullPrefix »

hazz99 wrote: post #33
NullPrefix wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Server side render fixed a lot of this and rankings/traffic jumped. Good, they should just delist client side rendered web pages.

Why? I enjoy writing client-side SPAs, and I can pump out a better UI/UX must faster than I could otherwise. My users don't care how I build it, just that the site works and is enjoyable to use. If I need server-side rendering I'll still write it with a client-side rendered (e.g. React), but tack on server-side rendering at the end.

>My users don't care how I build it, just that the site works and is enjoyable to use.

Filter out poor users by making the site inoperable with older hardware. If they cannot afford current gen i9, they will not afford whatever my ad network is pushing. Increases the conversion rate, so all is good.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#37

Post by wolco »

hazz99 wrote: post #33
NullPrefix wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Server side render fixed a lot of this and rankings/traffic jumped. Good, they should just delist client side rendered web pages.

Why? I enjoy writing client-side SPAs, and I can pump out a better UI/UX must faster than I could otherwise. My users don't care how I build it, just that the site works and is enjoyable to use. If I need server-side rendering I'll still write it with a client-side rendered (e.g. React), but tack on server-side rendering at the end.

I like to build my websites in COBOL but the browsers won't support it even though I'm more productive.

You are not building this for yourself if you need to be indexed by google. You need to build in a supported way.

The bigger question is why you think an spa should rank well in general. It's only one page.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#38

Post by rayshan »

jotto wrote: post #34
rayshan wrote: post #26

I echo what others like @sharkweek are saying - Google has been saying that they index JavaScript for quite a while now. At I/O 2019 they said the crawler should be on the latest Chromium codebase that supports all modern JavaScript features. I built some test cases [0] to see if this is true, and just couldn't get Google to index content inserted via JavaScript. For example, scroll down to the Popover button test ca…

I can confirm that they do not parse low ranking JavaScript sites , but they will parse higher ranking JavaScript sites. Bots aside (Twitter and Slack still don't parse JS), it is still in your best interest to server-side render or pre-render a JavaScript site. The time-to-first-paint difference always starts small, but as you add features the JS apps become so bloated you'd be better off starting over with a server…

Thank you! Good point about bots not parsing JavaScript. I find it increasingly important to build and test structured data so users sharing the content within these walled gardens will have a good experience.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#39

Post by greglindahl »

onetimeaccount1 wrote: post #31
sharkweek wrote: post #16

SEO consultant here (yeah, yeah). Please, still in 2019, be careful with JavaScript unless you're willing to deal with a lot of uncertainty. Google routinely says how things are supposed to work, but there are plenty of examples where their crawlers act inconsistent to public statements. To be clear, probably not Googlebot's fault though; we as a species do a lot of weird things when building websites. Just finished…

Bing Mobile Friendliness Test correctly renders JS pages. Fetch as BingBot does not currently. I logged a support request through Bing Webmaster and got a reply that their engineering team is working on it, so I would expect Bing to crawl JS sites just like Google in the near future.

Executing js is expensive, so you should expect bing to limit its willingness to index such sites, same as google.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#40

Post by stackola »

wolco wrote: post #37
hazz99 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I enjoy writing client-side SPAs, and I can pump out a better UI/UX must faster than I could otherwise. My users don't care how I build it, just that the site works and is enjoyable to use. If I need server-side rendering I'll still write it with a client-side rendered (e.g. React), but tack on server-side rendering at the end.

I like to build my websites in COBOL but the browsers won't support it even though I'm more productive. You are not building this for yourself if you need to be indexed by google. You need to build in a supported way. The bigger question is why you think an spa should rank well in general. It's only one page.

>The bigger question is why you think an spa should rank well in general. It's only one page.

Spoken like someone who hasn't used the web in 5 years.

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