Anyone Know When Google Started To Read

[Lee]

Javascript?

Regards,

Lee

[BDBionic]

ya mean like javascript code on a page or server side files?

google's been able to read it for a couple years now (picking out links and what not). but they've not been parsing it until recently.

[Dzinerbear]

However, most people at Search Engine Strategies 2004 here in Toronto back in May were still advising to steer clear of JS as much as possible, especially where links are concerned.

The search engines are getting better, but they're still not there yet.

Dzinerbear

[Lee]

Yeah i knew it could 'read' JavaScript but wasnt ure when it started to rank sites for the search terms used in JavaScripts

Regards,

Lee

[BDBionic]

html's still definitely the best way to go. it took me ages and ages of debating back and forth whether to start using javascript to have rotating banner add displays on one of my sites.

thankfully it's a pretty simple bit of javascript that doesn't interfere much with Google's ability to read and rank the page.

lately there's been talk of a new test bot from Google making the rounds with javascript being its target. finding and spidering javascript files, following URLs in javascript, etc etc. so we'll see where that gets us.