How to Optimize a Web Site Using JavaScript Menu - JavaScript and Search Engine Crawlers
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Web crawlers essentially behave as archaic pre-browser-web-war, circa 1995/6, web browsers – they do not understand JavaScript and cannot see layers (<div> tags). For those of you who do not remember (or know much about) the wild childhood of the world wide web, JavaScript was introduced in 1995 LiveScript, in order to enable client-side interactivity in the Netscape web browser. It evolved into multiple vendor-specific JavaScript/Jscript versions, and finally matured into the standard ECMAScript.
Since the JavaScript menu used by BBFA.org is built exclusively on JavaScript and hidden layers, the web crawlers are unable to follow the links placed in the menu. You can use the Search Engine Spider Simulator, which, as its name suggests, emulates what a web spider would see.
Just put your URL in the form and pay close attention to the links listed there. You will notice that if there were any links listed at all, they would be the ones placed in the content or the footer of the web page and not the ones placed in the menu itself. Why? Because the web crawler is unable to follow the links composed by JavaScript statements. All it can do is follow plain HTML links, i.e. <a href=”mypage.html”>My page</a>
Next: Tip One: Do Not Depent on the JavaScript Menu Alone >>
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