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Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

developers.google.com

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Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#51

Post by tomduncalf »

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…

I have also had a site which was purely client side React fail to index properly - some pages were not picked up, others were indexed weirdly (some of the page content ended up in the title on google somehow!). Migrated the site to use react-static (which was not too painful a migration) and all good now! This was before the change google announced to using the latest Chromium for Googlebot so I’m not sure if that would have solved the issue.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#52

Post by wolco »

stackola wrote: post #40
wolco wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope my mailed letter will reach hn soon so I can reply.

My work has powered some of the sites you've visited over the last 5 years. I hope you've enjoyed the experience.

Still doesn't make a spa worthly of ranking well in general.. unless it's really a useful app with actual functionality instead of a shallow one page website.

Reply with some sites you made that you feel should rank well. Let's see how they hold up.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#53

Post by wolco »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #48
edoceo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But to a crawler it's one "page". To humans it's different, but not to robot. Crawler still (mostly) "page" == GET

Yet here we are discussing TFA that says otherwise, and crawlers are only going to be become better at it. This is a beautiful part of the new web: indexable applications.

Crawlers were suppose to have this down in 2012 (at least google),now they recommend a sitemap page.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#54

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

NullPrefix wrote: post #36
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.

>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.

It is a website. If it requires i9 to run, something went seriously wrong. Was this sarcasm?

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#55

Post by stackola »

wolco wrote: post #52
stackola wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I hope my mailed letter will reach hn soon so I can reply. My work has powered some of the sites you've visited over the last 5 years. I hope you've enjoyed the experience. Still doesn't make a spa worthly of ranking well in general.. unless it's really a useful app with actual functionality instead of a shallow one page website. Reply with some sites you made that you feel should rank well. Let's see how they hold u…

No one is saying the should get a boost in ranking or rank well just by being an SPA. You're the one suggesting they should be penalized just for the fact they use client side rendering.

You seem to suggest that a SPA can only consist of a single `view`, when in fact there's often no discernible difference apart from the underlying architecture. Maybe we need a new word, so people stop getting confused. SPA has nothing to do with the amount of content or views a website has.

It's just as simple to create a shallow, useless website in PHP as it is in React.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#56

Post by NullPrefix »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #54
NullPrefix wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It is a website. If it requires i9 to run, something went seriously wrong. Was this sarcasm?

Exaggeration.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#57

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

wolco wrote: post #52
stackola wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I hope my mailed letter will reach hn soon so I can reply. My work has powered some of the sites you've visited over the last 5 years. I hope you've enjoyed the experience. Still doesn't make a spa worthly of ranking well in general.. unless it's really a useful app with actual functionality instead of a shallow one page website. Reply with some sites you made that you feel should rank well. Let's see how they hold u…

You can’t just say something completely false, wait until someone corrects you, and then go off about how you’ve made websites that they’ve used in the last 5 years so you know more than them.

That’s called appeal to authority. It’s a logical fallacy. Your statement was false, regardless of how “authoritative” you are on the subject. If you meant something else by your statement, you should have expressed it better.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#58

Post by Amezarak »

fooey wrote: post #19
kazinator wrote: post #6

A good search engine shouldn't process JS at all, and index only the content that is reachable via links pulled from HTML (which may, of course, be dynamic). The processing of JS explains a lot of the sheer garbage that is in the Google results. I think they do it because it ties into their business model. JS is needed to unearth the kind of crap that a certain segment of the user base is looking for. That certain se…

I quit catering to users who don't run JS a decade ago "nobody in their right mind" would expect to use the web in the last 15 years or so with JS disabled and have it actually work

Pretty much the entire web works just fine without JavaScript. Indeed, most of it works better without it - everything loads faster and there’s fewer annoyances like interstitial ads, auto playing audio, etc. Unless you’re serving an actual app, like webmail or online office, a webpage that doesn’t even render without js is an immediate bounce. I can get your content elsewhere.

I mean, almost the entire public web consists of blogs, forums, and news articles/essays. Almost all of these, with some modern exceptions, work perfectly fine. Of course, you may need JS to take full advantage of e.g., forum software features, but I can browse just fine. Sure, if you have a legitimate SPA like a mapping application or a game JS is a very reasonable expectation. But it’s hard for me to see what users gain otherwise. Actually, I don’t even see what developers gain, other than an improved resume.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#59

Post by pmarreck »

ashton314 wrote: post #28

A little off-topic, but one of the most exciting things in my mind about Phoenix LiveView [1] is that you can get some dynamic web applications and not have to navigate this JS-rendering minefield. When a LiveView page is request, the server sends over the full page as just static HTML. The JS half of LiveView then upgrades to a websocket connection, and your page becomes dynamic. Not a good fit for everything, but i…

1) huge elixir/phoenix fan, glad to see you promoting this here

2) but I'm really here to commend your comment on this now-flagged post that I now cannot respond to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20500181 . I don't know if HN mods understand the irony in deplatforming a post arguing against deplatforming, but I am 100% in agreement with you there.

Re: Understand the JavaScript SEO basics

#60

Post by ashton314 »

pmarreck wrote: post #59
ashton314 wrote: post #28

A little off-topic, but one of the most exciting things in my mind about Phoenix LiveView [1] is that you can get some dynamic web applications and not have to navigate this JS-rendering minefield. When a LiveView page is request, the server sends over the full page as just static HTML. The JS half of LiveView then upgrades to a websocket connection, and your page becomes dynamic. Not a good fit for everything, but i…

1) huge elixir/phoenix fan, glad to see you promoting this here 2) but I'm really here to commend your comment on this now-flagged post that I now cannot respond to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20500181 . I don't know if HN mods understand the irony in deplatforming a post arguing against deplatforming, but I am 100% in agreement with you there.

1) :)

2) Thank you! Is it really flagged? That's too bad. And funny, in a sad way.

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