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Does Google execute JavaScript?

stephanboyer.com

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Re: Does Google execute JavaScript?

#41

Post by [deleted] »

nrjdhsbsid wrote: post #17
Gigablah wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I was thinking that it was Apple and the iPhone that effectively killed Flash. Silly me.

They disliked flash for different reasons. Google for search and apple because flash games were too powerful, jobs wanted those games turned into iPhone apps. The offical reasons were speed and security, which was obviously a farce since all the major browser vendors wrote their own PDF viewers which is both slow and known for tons of security issues as well. They could have just as easily wrote their own fast and se…

[deleted]

Re: Does Google execute JavaScript?

#42

Post by [deleted] »

morganvachon wrote: post #33
nrjdhsbsid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They disliked flash for different reasons. Google for search and apple because flash games were too powerful, jobs wanted those games turned into iPhone apps. The offical reasons were speed and security, which was obviously a farce since all the major browser vendors wrote their own PDF viewers which is both slow and known for tons of security issues as well. They could have just as easily wrote their own fast and se…

I modded you up, not because I agree with everything you wrote, but because I want people to post counterpoints instead of brigading you. I think you're mistaken about Google not being able to index Flash; they've had that capability for about eight years to my knowledge. I do agree with you that Google's security model is broken in many ways, both on the web and in Android.

[deleted]

Re: Does Google execute JavaScript?

#43

Post by ncouture »

mootothemax wrote: post #28

I'm convinced that Google has several Googlebots that are run depending on how popular a site is. That is, new and low traffic sites are crawled by less intelligent bots, and as the site gets more visitors or better rankings, more complicated and resource intensive bots are deployed. How this might work with the most popular sites out there, the Amazons and Wikipedias of this world - I'm not so sure about that. If I…

You're at least partly right about sites being crawled differently depending on popularity. I think the factors may not be limited to popularity alone, but we see this behavior documented in the crawling rate documentation Google provides its users/clients so there is no reason it couldn't apply to other "expensive" actions their crawlers do.

How this might work with the most popular sites out there?

We see it in on-page answers that provide extracts of pages with the answers to questions asked in search phrases that include a reference to the document they were sourced from.

Matt Cutts used to qualify sites like Wikipedia as "reputable" to the eyes of the search engine.

Re: Does Google execute JavaScript?

#44

Post by lprubin »

Another, faster way to see what JavaScript google can crawl on your website is the google search console (previously known as google webmaster tools). They have a fetch as google button that allows you to enter a url on a site you own and see a visual rendering of how google crawlers see your page. It even gives you a side by side comparison of what the crawler sees vs what a user sees.

Re: Does Google execute JavaScript?

#45

Post by dx034 »

manojlds wrote: post #34
mootothemax wrote: post #28

I'm convinced that Google has several Googlebots that are run depending on how popular a site is. That is, new and low traffic sites are crawled by less intelligent bots, and as the site gets more visitors or better rankings, more complicated and resource intensive bots are deployed. How this might work with the most popular sites out there, the Amazons and Wikipedias of this world - I'm not so sure about that. If I…

You could join Google :)

The chances of becoming a part of the search team are still very low. Even most Googlers won't know the exact details.

Re: Does Google execute JavaScript?

#46

Post by dom0 »

mootothemax wrote: post #28

I'm convinced that Google has several Googlebots that are run depending on how popular a site is. That is, new and low traffic sites are crawled by less intelligent bots, and as the site gets more visitors or better rankings, more complicated and resource intensive bots are deployed. How this might work with the most popular sites out there, the Amazons and Wikipedias of this world - I'm not so sure about that. If I…

Or perhaps there are also heuristics in place to determine which strategy to follow, ie. heuristics to see whether executing JS would be worth it, would yield additional content. So, say, when crawling documentation, where JS doesn't give any of that (eg. Sphinx' JS search), it could decide - nah, not doing JS, not worth it.

I'd expect that there are also other heuristics and different strategies for crawling to better handle eg. content presented by one of the popular CMSes.

Re: Does Google execute JavaScript?

#48

Post by matt4077 »

mootothemax wrote: post #28

I'm convinced that Google has several Googlebots that are run depending on how popular a site is. That is, new and low traffic sites are crawled by less intelligent bots, and as the site gets more visitors or better rankings, more complicated and resource intensive bots are deployed. How this might work with the most popular sites out there, the Amazons and Wikipedias of this world - I'm not so sure about that. If I…

I recently put a little browser for themes for the hyper.app terminal online (https://hyperthemes.matthi.coffee). It was just something I used to try out Elm, and there's no reason to believe Google would regard it as anything different than a generic new site.

If you look at Google's cached version, you can see that the JS is executed (although it fails trying to download the actual data): https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hN5yCk...

Edit: as has been pointed out below, the cached version is just the same as the original and the JS gets executed on your end. This doesn't show weather Google also executes it during its crawl.

Re: Does Google execute JavaScript?

#49

Post by matt4077 »

camus2 wrote: post #37
ebbv wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google did not kill Flash. Chrome came bundled with Flash already installed. Apple made the biggest push to kill Flash and once support for HTML5 video was solid and widespread the main use case for Flash was gone. Java applets just always sucked and only masochists/sadists ever used them.

Adobe killed Flash itself, not Apple, not Chrome,not anti-flash troll X or Z on the internet.

You're arguing from a different definition under which nobody but Adobe ever had the possibility to "kill" flash. I doubt there's much disagreement that Apple's refusal of flash on iOS was the most significant factor in its demise. Without it, Adobe would to this day happily rake in the cash.

It's also a good reminder of the positive influence Apple has often had. Remember that "no flash" was the "no Esc" of its time, and that they had to go all-out to defend it (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/). 6 years later, it stands as one of the rare cases where a proprietary technology was replaced by an open standard.

Re: Does Google execute JavaScript?

#50

Post by tr1ck5t3r »

dx034 wrote: post #45
manojlds wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could join Google :)

The chances of becoming a part of the search team are still very low. Even most Googlers won't know the exact details.

Parse your content, then to finalise your page ranking, listen to what former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to say. I am a Robot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
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