NoScript and SEO
JavaScript allows web developers to have their web pages react to user actions e.g. cascading menus. And despite the many incompatibilities between different browsers, the use of JavaScript is now ubiquitous and by all accounts a successful technology. However, when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), JavaScript is problematic.
Search engine spiders like those used by Google, Yahoo, and MSN ignore JavaScript. The result of this is that what the crawlers "see" can be quite different than what users see. In addition, if JavaScript is the sole method of navigation, the search engines may not be able to index a site properly.
To remedy these issues, web developers can use the noscript tag. This tag allows alternative navigation and text to be included in a web page, but only shown to users that don't support JavaScript. Search engines, of course, would also see the contents within the tag. The problem with this technique is that search engine spammers quickly exploited the tag by stuffing keywords and irrelevant text in them an attempt to achieve high rankings. Once the search engines caught wind of this abuse they adjusted their algorithms to reduce and possibly eliminate any value from text in between noscript tags.
Recently, I've had a few discussions with co-workers about what role, if any, the noscript tag currently plays when it comes to SEO. My opinion is that using the tags won't automatically lead to a penalty unless the copy within the tags is completely different than the rest of the page. At the same time, I think there's likely not going to be any benefit either. If the only optimization I can come up with for a page is to include noscript tags, then it's probably a good sign that the page is as good as its going to get.
Still, if you're inclined to use the tags, the way I would approach them is by asking yourself these two questions:
- Would the page in question fail a manual audit by a search engineer at Google?
- Would you be embarrassed if all of your customers saw the copy within the tags?
If you answer yes to any of those questions, you're likely treading in to search engine spam territory. Proceed at your own risk.
Note that I'm also using this post as a little test. I've got a noscript tag embedded in the page. The blurb between the tags currently returns 0 results in Google. In a few days I should be able to answer whether such text is included in Google's search results.
Results
Update: June 21, 2007
I've confirmed one of my readers comments. The text within the noscript tag is indeed indexed and it is considered when determining what results to show on Google.
Update: February 27, 2009
Had to replace the text in the noscript tags because one of the commenters included it in his comments. Ugh. No results in Google for the updated text.
The non-script tag is important for accessibility mostly and the content gets indexed. However, it has been misused by many seo back hats in the past and that is why Google and other major search engines do not consider it so important.
Generally, showing content this way is bad practice.
What you can do is to modify the CSS rather the direct content. This way you have the content in plain HTML and only the visualization modified by the JavaScript (the CSS properties). The tag i simply a workaround for a bad script architecture. In addition, this way the content will be shown if the user doesn't have JS support.
I just searched in Google for the contents of your noscript tag, and this page was indeed listed. It seems that Google does index the contents of the noscript tag.
Your experiment works now. Not gonna ruin it for you by pasting a link to Google however ^^.
One result in Google for the updated text. Keywords in a noscript-Tag get indexed by Google.
SS:
Why on earth would you place the blurb within the noscript tag in a POST!
You just invalidated the test for the rest of us.
Nice going.
Thanks Marcelo. I missed that SS had actually written the blurb in the comment. I've removed it and I'm about to replace it with something else.
You said:
Note that I'm also using this post as a little test. I've got a noscript tag embedded in the page. The blurb between the tags currently returns 0 results in Google.
The blurb within noscript tag is *snip*blurb removed by editor because SS is a moron*snip*. When I search for this phrase in Google, I get just this page.
Yes, but if there is a link within the noscript will it pass PR to the page it links to? We have a site that has so many products in each category it would show about 100 products. But we only want to show about 20 and when the user scrolls down more products are added. If we put all the products in a noscript will those links allow the additional product pages to be cached? Does anyone know this? please email if you have an answer. Thanks.
Thanks - this post had exactly the answer I was looking for. I wasn't really planning to use the noscript tags to stuff the page with content, I just wanted a clear answer whether the content would be indexed and/or penelized.
Have you experimented with putting navigation links inside of the noscript tags? Do the crawlers follow the links and index the pages at the receiving end?
Soren,
Thanks for checking and letting me know. I've been able to find such tags in use on commercial sites and they also appear in search results. With the case of these sites, the noscript has been in place for quite some time.
Yeah... Google now shows a result for text you have in the noscript tag.