If I decided to use some javascipt in my website like

$('#body').load(URL);

or

$.get(URL, {param:value}, function(){ ... });

or

window.title = 'TEXT';

Is it good for SEO? Or am I remended to use pure PHP for data on the page for SEO purposes?

If I decided to use some javascipt in my website like

$('#body').load(URL);

or

$.get(URL, {param:value}, function(){ ... });

or

window.title = 'TEXT';

Is it good for SEO? Or am I remended to use pure PHP for data on the page for SEO purposes?

• javascript
• seo

• @drachenstern, this isn't a duplicate of that question. That one was pertaining to generating major parts of the site through javascript. This one is asking if it is bad in general. If you want to close as a dupe, please find a better dupe. – aaronasterling Commented Dec 27, 2010 at 4:50

8 Answers 8

The question of if javascript is good for SEO or not is missing the point. We should pretty much assume that any content which is only available by javascript will not be crawled by the search engines. Google at least claims to be able to crawl some javascript only content but is fairly tight lipped about what exactly they can crawl. Other search engines probably don't crawl it and it's certainly the case that not all do. So assume it doesn't get crawled.

That doesn't mean it's bad for SEO.

If the content will contribute to your SEO, then it's bad for SEO. If the content is neutral to SEO, then it's neutral for SEO. So the answer to your question really depends on the nature of your content. If the content is part of your SEO campaign, then stick with server-side HTML generation be it PHP or some other method. Otherwise the question of SEO has no bearing on the decision to to use javascript or not. Accessibility would be another thing to take into account. Javascript only content is terrible for that.

The larger search engines can/do render limited amounts of javascript. However, for SEO purposes your best bet is rendering the content via HTML rather than javascript. A good rule of thumb is to utilize HTML for content/expressing limited content structure (e.g. paragraph type text = p, lists = ul/ol, headings = h1/h2/h3, etc...), CSS for presentation, and JS for client side programming. With that being said, always ensure a good user experience first. If you can do the above while providing a great user experience, great! If you can't, users first. Its likely you can keep both users and bots happy 95% of the time if you take the time to do so.

Further reading (sorry, I can only post one link as a new user):

Matt Cutts Interview (Check out #26 on Google Javascript Rendering)
A spider's view of Web 2.0

EDIT Added that for "a new user" ;) ~ drachenstern

I think first you should consider what SEO means. It means "Search Engine Optimization" ... how does a search engine get data in the first place for it to be optimized?

It does a GET on the page and whatever data is returned in the GET is processed. No JS engine. No POST data. So you should be optimizing for whatever data is returned on a GET.

Additionally, you tagged this with PHP, but the question has nothing to do with PHP.

Have you seen any of the questions on this list?
https://stackoverflow./search?q=javascript+seo

No Sir, Google does not translate flash and java script properly so it may not crawl those area using java script or flash content. I suggest you should keep your website simple but if it is necessary to keep flashy/java script content then you should keep a text base backup.

Google can crawl, index and rank javascript generated content. But... it uses an old Chrome version (42) with an old javascript render engine.

The consequence is that your javascript code needs to work in older browsers and older chrome versions (older than 42). So no fancy ES6 functions, you need to use polyfills or use Babel for example.

Although you can do a lot with javascript (like click events or inject your mobile menu), it's remended to still use a-href instead of a button with a javascript event and then using a function to get to a new page.

You can check the mobile testing tool from Google: https://search.google./test/mobile-friendly and check the errors/warnings/logs. If the rendered output looks like intended, Google will see your content.

In search console you can also ask to index the page. Sometimes the javascript crawler is first, sometimes the 'classic' crawler.

Doublecheck it some days afterward by googling a sentence or paragraph from your page.

There's no answer about if it's better or not. Content is content and Google should rank your website, SPA, PWA, AMP site, PDF document, online Doc, wikipage, and so on based on their content, not on the underlying technique.

If you are familiar with JavaScript, give it a go.

Regards, Peter

The first thing you should be asking is not what is good for SEO, but what is good for users. For users, loading data with JavaScript will give them an interactive page, where they can start seeing the page immediately while it is still loading and where the page can update without having to reload it.

From Google's Webmaster Guidelines and article on Cloaking, you should not assume that crawlers can understand JavaScript. This does not mean that you should not use JavaScript on your website, but rather that you should provide the textual equivalent in noscript tags, for use both by users with JavaScript disabled as well as for crawlers, bearing in mind that the content of these noscript tags should be roughly equivalent to what was shown with JavaScript enabled; showing different content to users and to search engines is called "cloaking" and is frowned upon to say the least.

Google doesn't (yet) execute a page's Javascript (JS). So if your JS replaces/creates content on a page then the content would normally be invisible to the crawlers (not good).

But, the Googlers have implemented a url hack that enables your server to create pages (from the server, not from JS), with all the different varients of your JS page's content.

This solves the SEO problem of Ajax powered pages. At least for Google searches...

See Crawable Ajax

Javascript or any scripts for that matter should never be used to house your sites content, ever! The entire web is driven by HTML and CSS, and in rare cases XML languages, everything else is a headache when it es to SEO. Ask yourself this question, what exactly is SEO and what is it that search engines are indexing? Javascript and all programming/scripting languages are proprietary, this means that they are NOT standards as defined by the W3C, which means they are essentially worthless when it es to indexing content. On the other hand, HTML, CSS, and XML are real standards developed for the web! It's ok to use scripts to add additional functionality to your pages, embed apps like social networking plugins, etc, but you should never use them to hold your websites HTML, CSS, or actual content ever, for any reason. Here's a link to a good article that will explain why you should be using HTML and CSS, and not a million scripts, optimizing webpages using proper html markup. Scripts cause other problems besides code that is hard for search engines to decipher. For one, they are harder for browsers to process, causing pages to load much slower than "static" pages made with HTML and CSS would. Pages made with PHP tend to create "dynamic" URL's that users and search engines cannot read. This is why Google remends people who use jsp or PHP for their webpages include a sitemap, otherwise your links will never be found and might as well not exist. Stick to the conventions! Lets face it, we have standards for a reason. If every electronic ponent in your home required had a different type of plug that required a special socked, and all those devices had differing voltage and amperage requirements, what would happen? You would essentially burn down your house! And, you'd be spending 5 hours a day at the hardware store looking for those special adapters to fit your wall sockets with. If you plan on designing a website, use scripts for embedding apps or connecting with a database only, and use HTML and CSS to build "static" webpages. Also, use text links, as they are both human and search engine readable, and easy to index and make sense of. Never use scripts for your links. Programming and scripting can be fun, but not on the internet its not.

Search engines index HTML, CSS, and content (multi-media, graphics, videos, text, thats it!) everything else is pointless and annoying to both users and search engines alike. For best results use XML and design a custom language.