Can Search Engines Crawl And Index JavaScript? - SEO & Web Design | Nova Solution

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Can Search Engines Crawl And Index JavaScript?

5 Important Questions To Ask

Web Design & SEO Company

When you begin the process of searching for a reliable web design or SEO company, don’t make the common mistake of failing to ask the right questions. You need to interview your potential web designer to determine if they are a good fit. It’s important to make sure you are partnering with the best professional who will help you achieve your brand goals. We’ll take a look at 5 critical questions that you need to ask a web design agency before you hire them.

Google

In many cases, Google has appeared to be the only search engine that tries to index JavaScript pages. The rest, which include Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and DuckDuckGo, do not index JavaScript at all. Hence, if content is not in HTML, these search engines won’t see it and it will possibly never rank. Therefore, as an SEO expert, don’t just cover crawling and indexing issues on Google. If you intend to rank on other search engines as well, make sure the problem is resolved beyond Google.

Yahoo and Bing

On Yahoo and Bing, there’s a high chance that your JavaScript content will not be indexed and crawled. These two search engines do not invest heavily in resolving crawling and indexing issues as much as Google. This is mainly because of the high cost of crawling and indexing the web. Google on the other hand, is able to invest millions of dollars in adjusting their algorithms to ensure they are able to index and crawl all kinds of content. This is because they don’t have to worry about their ROI. Bing has a small percentage of the search market compared to Google. However, Yahoo is growing over the last few years and it is likely to improve its algorithms to take into account crawling and indexing issues on JavaScript frameworks.

Ask.com

One surprising bit is that Ask.com, a search engine that covers less than 1% of the search market, is able to index and crawl JavaScript. How is it that a small search engine was able to invest in indexing and crawling of JavaScript? It could be due to the recent speculations that the search engine has some relationship with Google. Though unconfirmed, Ask is using a similar crawling and indexing technology as Google.

If your searchers are primarily on Google, it could be that you don’t really care about the other smaller search engines. However, don’t focus too much on JavaScript frameworks on your web pages expecting that Google will still crawl and index them. Remember that JavaScript crawling and indexing is still in its early stages. Therefore, you should not compromise your rankings by relying too much on JavaScript. In fact, web pages that have shifted from JavaScript to non-JavaScript reliant pages, have witnessed significant boost in rankings.

Is it too late?

It could be that you’ve already invested in a client-rendered website and you simply can’t go back and start over again. In this case, you can explore different options such as pre-rendering services or server-side rendering. They will help you to navigate the JavaScript crawling and indexing issues until you can come up with better solutions to present your content. Partner with a SEO company that will review all crawling or indexing issues you’re currently experiencing and provide effective solutions.

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