google (and others) and Ajax - how does it index the dynamic nature of the pages?

[completerookie]

we're all hearing about dynamic pages and Ajax and with the right tools, its easy to make some fantastic pages - you've only got to look at Dojo and Ext-Js and so on I use them extensively in my in-house intranet and they work brilliantly offloading a lot of mundane work onto the browser.

working with databases inside an intranet is easy, there's no need to worry about google and search engines - you want to remain invisible

but its a whole new ball game when it comes to the www - if you don't appear in google and the like, then your'e invisible

Can anyone point me to some good reading material as to how to make Ajax pages more search engine friendly.

Has anyone got any good Ajax tools that work "out of the box" that are also SEO friendly

[CymraegKev]

My understanding is that Ajax and SEO does not mix (at least not yet), primarily because the search indexers cannot (or will not) index JavaScript.

When I work with Ajax, I always try and give search engines alternative methods of getting to the content.

It's not just SEO that is the issue either, its accessibility - Ajax can be very accessible, but it needs to be done in the correct manor. Most examples on the web of "how to do X with Ajax" do not consider SEO or Accessibility.

There is a good article here that discusses some of the issues: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006889.html

Kevin

[completerookie]

its an interesting article, but I think its a bit out of date, 1yr+ is a long time on the web.
I came across an article that checks whether google interprets javascript - here the author put in meaningless words to see if they would turn up in the google index.
seems basic JS that generates document.write syntax held on your own site is indexed but JS held on another site will not be indexed.

Gabe, you makes a lot of use of Ajax techniques, do you "suffer" within the search engines as a result?
don't get me wrong, I don't have answers. hence the reason for the question

[Steve G Griggs]

Ajax, JS and SEO

As I understand it Google just ignores any sort of script language, it only reads valid HTML/XML. We can only hope this might change soon after all various script languages run the e-commerce world, so why exclude the scripts from SEO??? Unless I have missed a trick that is?

[wjcampbe]

As I understand it Google just ignores any sort of script language

That is no longer strictly true. G can and does read on-page script, but just applies certain rules... More info on G's site.

[CymraegKev]

This blog article by TV Ramon (recent post) has a good update on Google's view of accessible content.

Cheers

Kevin

[completerookie]

cheers for the link