Is Javascript a hindrance for search engines - search engine optimization tip 24 feb 2005

Javascript is a complex language which needs lot of browser understandable coding to make it friendly for browsers, Search engine crawlers are not too sophisticated browsers, they dont have high capabilities like Internet explorer or firefox in understanding Javascript,



So best is to reduce the use of javascript in web pages intend to be search engine friendly, Large javascript coding also covers a lot of the page and search engines find difficult to index contents buried lower than the javascript, Best option is to add the javascript used for your site in an external .js file, that way the size of the page is reduced,

Search engines like google used to crawl only the first 101kb of the html of the page, so it is important that the higher level of the page is well accessible by crawlers, Also it is best to avoid Javascript dropdown menus, rollovers, popups etc, Search engines find difficult to crawl these stuff, if you have a javascript menu best is to add text only links to your inner pages, that way search engines wont struggle in finding your precious inner pages,



Googlebot google's crawler has recently been reported to crawl javascript, it is a great improvement but still it is in beginning stage, so better avoid javascript menus and avoid large coding in javascript,

Use external .js files to reduce the size of the page,

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