Tags: AJAX, html, CSS, web programming, SEO, index, search engines, SES NYC

Danny Sullivan – Host

• Issues related to increase in technology and how the search engines handle it

Shari Thorow – Grantastic Designs

• CSS – cascading style sheets
• • Contols design parameters
  • Search engines can and do read CSS
  • Decreases download time of page
  • Easier to control exact positioning
  • Hidden text and hidden links – considered search engine spam
  • Tagging – H1 tag used for headlines
  • Alt text in img – don’t wrap h1 tag around an image, does not help
  • CSS Layer coordinates – search engines detect this (negative coordinates to put text off page) – spam
  • Layers on top of each other – can be detected by search engines
• There are legit uses of hidden layers
• • Drop down menu – text is clearly meant to be read by humans
• Do not robot exclude styles directory or javascript files

Ryan Johnston & Jim McFadyen – Critical Mass (Ajax & Search)

• AJAX is the new buzzword in web design
• Merely an improved user interface
• Application like functionality on site
• Asynchronous Javascript And Html
• Makes pages feel more responsive
• Allows communication with browser and server without refresh
• XHTML and CSS is used for presentation of AJAX
• Supported by all browsers with javascript enabled
• AJAX is NOT supported by search engines
• • Search engines do not run javascript
  • Often, content will not be indexed
  • Especially true with navigation – stop indexing
• Limitations
• • Every page must exist as an html page
  • Must be a page SE can find and index
  • Every page must have it’s content on the page
  • Links must already be in html (normal html anchor text)
  • Test site, by turning javascript off, and navigate site.  If you can see content you are delivering, you’re good to go
• Developers – what they do
• • Normal anchor text – will now be collected and changed the functionality.  Instead of going page to page for each of the anchor tags, it will run them directly on the one page
  • Search engines will just follow the links along (sans-javascript)
• What to do
• • First build out your baseline application, make sure it runs without javascript turned on
  • Test for all users (limited supported users)
• Example:  www.rolex.com
• • Ajax call: new content on page, but URL does not change
  • Turn javascript off, need to make sure still navigate to these pages (in a static type way)
• AJAX breaks normal browser refresh
• • No history, no back button
  • Content is not the corresponding URL, makes for a possible cloaking
  • Use javascript to add unique page IDs to each page
  • Use javascript to fake an entry on a users history (using # in URL)
  • EX: www.yoursite.com/category/product.html#/category/product or www.yoursite.com/category/product.html#product/category
  • • This can be 4 or 5 dif. Ways
    • But search engines ignor everything beyond #, which gets rid of content duplication issues with indexing
• Example: Rolex.com – URL’s update beyond the # sign
• # sign URLs are the solution to separate page indexing and excluding duplication
• Scripts to accommodate URL updates
• • Unfocus.com/projects/?page_id=3
  • Asual.com has one as well
• BAD AJAX example – GUCCI.com
• • No ajax support – turn off javascript and there is NOTHING
  • Site breaks every rule, all site is served exclusively through AJAX
• GOOD AJAX example
• • Amazon diamond search
  • • Uses sliders for results
    • Without javascript – similar interface, just no sliders
    • Added ajax as an enhancement, not a requirement
    • All nav links without javascript

Search Engine Representatives on Panel

Dan Crow – Google

• Beginning to move in the direction of supporting javascript with Google
• Also flash indexing coming, and dynamic rich sites
• Don’t assume that anything in javascript will be hidden from search engines, soon that won’t be true

Amit Kumar – Yahoo!

• Reason they don’t use javascript, search engines fault, behind the 8 ball on it
• Lots of users are behind as well, lacking javascript, so we should optimize for non-javascript and flash as well
• Do not exclude CSS or Javascript in robots.txt
• Sitemaps are great, submit them, they help

Danny Sullivan – Q&A

• Firefox addon – Web Developer (can use to turn on/off cookies, javascript, flash etc)
• Widgets Best Practices
• • Make sure it’s legitimate
  • Concern that widget is in an iframe.
• Spam Filters
• • Reflects the intention of users
  • If it’s clearly navigational, will not trip the spam filters