Javascript with Googlebot
JavaScript is a dynamic computer programming language. It is lightweight and most commonly used as a part of web pages, whose implementations allow client-side script to interact with the user and make dynamic pages. It is an interpreted programming language with object-oriented capabilities.
JavaScript is a cross-platform, object-oriented scripting language used to make webpages interactive (e.g., having complex animations, clickable buttons, popup menus, etc.). There are also more advanced server side versions of JavaScript such as Node.js, which allow you to add more functionality to a website than downloading files. Inside a host environment (for example, a web browser), JavaScript can be connected to the objects of its environment to provide programmatic control over them.
Features Of JavaScript
JavaScript language consists of several different features. Some of the general JavaScript features are as follows –
1. Validating User’s Input
JavaScript is very useful while using forms. It has the capability to validate user input for errors and also saves time. If the user leaves a required field empty or the information is incorrect, JavaScript checks for them before sending the data over to the server.
2. Simple Client-side Calculations
Since JavaScript is a client-side technology, it can perform basic calculations on the browser. The browser does not need to ask server time for every task. This is especially helpful when a user needs to perform these calculations repeatedly. In these cases, connecting to the server would take a lot more time than performing the actual calculations.
3. Greater Control
JavaScript provides greater control to the browser rather than being completely dependent on the web servers. JavaScript provides various browsers with additional functionalities that help reduce server load and network traffic.
4. Platform Independent
Since browsers interpret JavaScript, it solves the problem of compilation and compatibility. Thus it can run on Windows, Macintosh, and other Netscape-supported systems. Also, it is possible to embed them in any other script like HTML that keeps JavaScript into use.
5. Handling Dates and Time
Unlike other programming languages, JavaScript has built-in functions to determine the date and time. Thus it is very easy to code only by using methods like .getDate().
6. Generating HTML Content
JavaScript has very handy features to dynamically generate HTML content for the web. It allows us to add text, links, images, tables, etc after an event occurrence (eg — mouse click).
7. Detecting the User’s Browser and OS
JavaScript is very capable in the detection of the user’s browser and OS information. Though JavaScript runs on every platform, there may occur a situation where we need the user’s browser before processing. This can be helpful for writing code that results in different outputs in different browsers.
Applications and Uses of JavaScript
Frameworks of JavaScript
JS frameworks are JavaScript programming libraries that have pre-written code to use for standard programming functions and tasks. It’s a framework to create websites or web applications around. Frameworks are more adaptable for website design and most website developers prefer it. Let’s take a look at the best JS Frameworks.
How Googlebot processes JavaScript
Googlebot processes JavaScript web apps in three main phases:
- Crawling
- Rendering
- Indexing
Googlebot crawls, renders, and indexes a page.
Googlebot
This is the crawler, also called the spider. Whenever there’s a new web page or any new updates on a webpage, Googlebot will be the first point of contact from the search engine.
What it does is it crawls the web pages and follows all the links in a web page. That way, the bot discover more new links and more new web pages to crawl. Crawled web pages are then passed to Caffeine for indexation.
Keep in mind that Googlebot CAN be denied access using robots.txt. The first thing to keep in mind if you want your JavaScript-powered web pages crawled and indexed is to remember to allow access for the crawlers. Remember to also submit your URLs to Google using the Google Search Console by submitting an XML sitemap.
Caffeine
The is the indexer that was launched in back in 2010. Whatever’s crawled by Googlebot will be indexed by Caffeine and that index is where Google choose which web pages to rank.
One important thing that Caffeine also does, other than indexing crawled contents is, Caffeine is also the one who renders JavaScript web pages. This is very important as for JavaScript, without rendering the search engine will not be able to index the complete content of a web page.
Links discovered from rendering will also be sent back to Googlebot to queue for crawling which will result in a second indexation. This is a very important point to keep in mind because one important part of SEO is internal linking. Inter-linking your web pages in your website gives Google a strong signal for things like page rank, authority and also crawl frequency. Which all, at the end of the day affects page ranking.
Here’s a quick image that sums up what Googlebot and Caffeine do.
Crawling: Can Search Engines Find Your Pages?
Now making sure your site gets crawled and indexed is prerequisite of getting your site show up in the SERPs. One way to check your indexed paged is “site:yourdomain.com”, an advanced search operator.
Head to Google and type “site:yourdomain.com” into the search bar. Google will return results in its index for the site specified like this:
Here’s Google’s results of BiQ Cloud’s indexation, now go give your site a try!
The number of results Google displays (see “About XX results” above) isn’t exact, but it does give you a solid idea of which pages are indexed on your site and how they are currently showing up in search results.
For more accurate results, you can sign up for a free Google Search Console account if you don’t currently have one.
Crawling and Indexing Process for JavaScript Powered Webpage Is Different
Here we have a straightforward graphic from this year’s Google i/o which shows you the flow from crawling to indexing and rendering.
That is good for getting a general idea of the whole process, but why don’t we zoom a little closer?
So what happens when the search engine reach your normal, HTML, non-Java-Script powered pages
