Google, Spiders and AJAX

[Mrblogs]

I was tempted before to write an entire site using a single html page, and update the content using AJAX, almost as a frames system. Components would be updated from backend PHP, and Javascript would be the "HTML" generator as it were - it sounded great in theory, less bandwidth being used as only the parts that needed to change were changed, etc.

Except then I thought about Spiders, and Bots, and how MSN/Yahoo/Google would see the site. As far as I am aware those bots do not have any javascript parsers as part of their makeup - and so, they would essentially see a blank site - which would not be good for SEO.

The alternative then is to redirect them to a lo-fi version of the site - which essentially means making two versions of the site and more hassle and work.

The latter would also require bot identification so that people who can view the AJAX content will get taken to their, and people who cant and bots will get taken to the other part - however this is never easy and it is a bad idea (i thought) to do that based solely on user-agent.

Do you think that the spiders should be parsing ajax/dhtml generated pages now?

[trichnosis]

if you give your link with like <a href="mlfkldmf.html">kfdkfkd</a>

yes google will parse this

but i have no idea with the other search engine bots

[sniperhiga]

Yes, it is ok.
google/yahoo/msn... they can't see flash, but Ajax, php, javascript works fine.

[Johan007]

Yes nothing wrong with the simple AJAX as I use it, however you are advised to download the excellent developers toolbar for FireFox or the M$ equivalent and disable ActiveX and CSS using it (very simple). You will then see what the bot sees.

[Johan007]

correction... with the toolbar disable JavaScript and CSS to see what a SE would see.

[solidghost]

I think that google can see some flash. Just not too complex ones.

[Dulac]

It should be fine, dynamic rss is similar to this.

[oseymour]

I built a site as a test with a flash intro with the link in the flash movie and google indexed just fine.....

[Mrblogs]

My point is - There is no bot that I know of that executes javascript and obtains the final page output - and being as AJAX RELIES on Javascript - it would stand to reason that any AJAX generated content would not be seen by a bot in the same way as it would not be seen by someone unless they enabled javascript.