Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Would using javascript onclick functions to override href target be ok?
-
Hi all,
I am currently working on a new search facility for me ecommerce site... it has very quickly dawned on me that this new facility is far better than my standard product pages - from a user point of view - i.e lots of product attributes for customers to find what they need faster, ability to compare products etc... All in all just better. BUT NO SEO VALUE!!!
i want to use this search facility instead of my category/product pages... however as they are search pages i have "robots noindex them" and dont think its wise to change that...
I have spoken to the developers of this software and they suggested i could use some javascript in the navigation to change the onlclick function to take the user to the search equivelant of the page...
They said this way my normal pages are the ones that are still indexed by google etc, but the user has the benefit of using the improved search pages...
This sounds perfect, however it also sounds a little deceptive... and i know google has loads of rules about these kinds of things, the last thing i want is to get any kind of penalty or any negative reaction from an SEO point of view... I am only considering this as it will improve the user experience on my website...
Can any one advise if this is OK, or a "no no"...
P.s for those wondering i use an "off the shelf" cart system and it would cost me an arm and a leg to have these features built into my actual category / product pages.
-
Hello James,
Why do these pages have "no SEO value"? Is it because they are AJAX pages or because you have them noindexed? Or both?
To answer your original question, using an on-click javascript event to send a user to a page other than the URL listed in the href tag is borderline. It goes beyond the risk level I would feel comfortable with on an eCommerce site, but a lot of affiliate sites do this. For instance, all of their links out to merchant sites may go through a directory called /outlink/ so the href tag might look like .../outlink/link1234 and appear to send the user to another page on their domain, when actually the user gets redirected to the merchant's (e.g. Amazon.com, Best Buy...) website. Sometimes the user is redirected from the /outlink/... URL and sometimes they never even get that far because the javascript sends them to the merchant's URL first.
It is not cloaking unless you are specifically treating Google differently. If Google doesn't understand your site that is their problem. If you have code that essentially says "IF Google, THEN do this. ELSE do that" it is your problem because you are cloaking. Make sense? There is a very distinct line there.
The bottom line is if you want to show users a certain page then you should be showing that page to Google as well. If the problem is the content on that page doesn't appear for Google (e.g. AJAX) then you should look into optimizing that type of content to the best of your ability. For example, look into the use of hashbangs (#!) as in:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started
-
1. Google understands simple JS that is inline with your HTML. So Google understands that
is a link to domain.com. You can obfuscate this further and Google might not understand it. I've not seen Google try to parse or execute JS but that doesn't mean they can't or won't in the future.3. Google is very unlikely to spider AJAX. Many AJAX pages don't return any user readable content (most of mine return things like JSON, which is not for end user consumption) and , as such, are beyond the scope of indexation. Again, as in #2, you might want this content to be shown elsewhere if you want it indexed. https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/
-
ok, i am not keen on this approach, the developers have offered an alternative... but again, i'm not sure about it, they have said they can use ajax to force their search results / navigation over my current navigation / products on my category / product pages...
this gets rid of having to use javascript to send to different url... but up above Alan mentions cloaking, which to my understanding is basically serving anything different for a search engine / person... and thats what this will do... it serves up a different navigation to people... and the products could be listed in a different order etc... search engines do not see the ajax...
Is this any better? or just as negative?
-
Are they identical, you say the search equivalent, I just wouldn't treat search engines any different
-
even thou the content is identical?
It is only the way that content can then be navigated that is different...
-
Well then, yes I would be concerned, you are serving up different content to users, that is cloaking.
-
Hi Alan,
i think i may have explained incorrectly - my search page does have the meta tag noindex,follow - it also has a canonical link back to the main search page (i.e search.html) so i do not think any of the search results will be indexed. So my concern is not duplicate content, this should not happen...
My concern is the fact i am using javascript to litterally divert customers from one page to another... its almost like the static pages are there only for the benefit of google... and thats concerning me...
-
Google can follow JavaScript links, unless you are very good at hiding them.
I would not worry too much about the duplicate content, don't expect the duplicates to rank, but your not likely to be penalized for them. you can use a canonical tag to point all search results back to the one page.
I would not no index any pages, any links pointed to a no-index page are pouring their link juice away. if you want to no index a page use the meta tag no-index,follow, this way the search engine will follow the links and flow back out to your site
read about page rank and how link juice flows
http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Optimal use of keywords in header tag
what does optimal use of keywords in header tag actually mean given you indicate this as hurting seo factor?
Technical SEO | | Serg1550 -
Can you use multiple videos without sacrificing load times?
We're using a lot of videos on our new website (www.4com.co.uk), but our immediate discovery has been that this has a negative impact on load times. We use a third party (Vidyard) to host our videos but we also tried YouTube and didn't see any difference. I was wondering if there's a way of using multiple videos without seeing this load speed issue or whether we just need to go with a different approach. Thanks all, appreciate any guidance! Matt
Technical SEO | | MattWatts1 -
Canonical Tag when using Ajax and PhantomJS
Hello, We have a site that is built using an AJAX application. We include the meta fragment tag in order to get a rendered page from PhantomJS. The URL that is rendered to google from PhantomJS then is www.oursite.com/?escaped_fragment= In the SERP google of course doesnt include the hashtag in the URL. So my question, with this setup, do i still need a canonical tag and if i do, would the canonical tag be the escaped fragment URL or the regular URL? Much Appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RevanaDigitalSEO0 -
Custom hreflang tags in WP & using with Yoast
Hi My clients dev has added custom fields for adding hreflang tags to head of pages such as: "Rel Type", "The URL", and "Language Code" Am i right in thinking that until a different language/country version of the site is created these can remain empty or should they still be populated once added say with some sort of global reference or best left blank since will leave the head content global by default ? Also how important is it to add charset to the language code ? since seems optional ? Also this set up is on WP multi-site with Yoast and devs asked me the below: _One thing to note is that Yoast generates its own "canonical" tags - so if _
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
_you are going to use hreflang tags and canonical tags then you don't need to _
_add a canonical using the custom fields I have set up - Yoast has that _
sorted. _But if you are going down the route of NOT having any canonical tags - and _
_using a x-defult for the hreflang tags, I will need to try and suppress the _
_Yoast canonical tag so you can do this. Much depends on your approach and _
what you think is best. So how do i know if using canonicals or x-default, i take it best simplest to leverage Yoast and hence not add canonicals to custom fields ? Isnt x-default just for indicating language selectors/redirector not specific to 1 region? So long as havnt got those then good to proceed with Yoasts generated canonicals ? Cheers dan0 -
Does using data-href="" work more effectively than href="" rel="nofollow"?
I've been looking at some bigger enterprise sites and noticed some of them used HTML like this: <a <="" span="">data-href="http://www.otherodmain.com/" class="nofollow" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a <="" span="">Instead of a regular href="" Does using data-href and some javascript help with shaping internal links, rather than just using a strict nofollow?</a>
Technical SEO | | JDatSB0 -
Use of title tags on divs for SEO purposes
Hello community, I recently was asked by a client to analyze a website of a competitor. I did was he asked me to do but when I looked at the source code of the website I found this code: I changed the exact words into something for privacy reasons, but I never looked at a code like this.
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing
Using a div for an anchor I get but adding a title tag to the div? I never seen that before. Title tags on anchors, yes, using images in divs as background and then adding a title??? Does anyone have any experience with a code like this and if you do how does this impact rankings? Does it impact rankings at all and does anybody know of any correlation between the two? Looking forward for your responses. Regards Jarno0 -
Am I Wasting my time using pingler.com
Ok so here is the question. A few months ago i decided to join pingler.com and pay for the service as i was using the free service, but after four months now i have not noticed any changes and i am just wondering if i am wasting my time using the paid service. would love to hear from people who have or are using the service and let me know if this is a waste of time and my money could be better spent elsewhere. look forward to hearing your thoughts
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Using symbols in the html title of a webpage
If you a symbol in the title of a webpage will this dilute the keywords in the title
Technical SEO | | mickey11
thus making it rank worse in search engines here is an example <title><br /> Black Shoe Polish<br /></title> versus <title><br /> ▶ Black Shoe Polish<br /></title> will the extra symbols count as words and thus the dilute the effectiveness of the Black Shoe Polish keyword. sort of making like 4 words instead 3. By the way, The reason to use a symbol is to make it stand on in the search engine results0