Google and javascript

[eddieredwood]

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[Nobody1560986989723]

Why does the site need a JavaScript updater in the first place? That is, before you even consider search engines. You can load properties etc from a database using PHP and mySQL (or any other database) - you may be even have a field in your database that holds the ALT attribute.

I think Google's getting better at reading AJAX content, but I think you have to look at the website structure and ask WHY you're using a particular technology and if that's the best user experience you can give your users.

Twitter recently have said they are abandoning a certain JavaScript hack because it will speed up the website, so carefully consider that question first and then address the search engine question.

[wrttnwrd]

Google attempts to execute javascript, in some cases. But it does a really awful job of it. With the code you've got, it'll ignore the script content.

The smart change to make here would be to switch to a CSS plus javascript solution. The best solution is something like jquery, where you have an HTML list of images, then use CSS to hide the images and javascript to reveal it.

That way, if a crawler hits the page, it sees the entire list of images and ALT attributes.

That's called graceful degradation - it's best practices for SEO.

While it'll take a lot of work, it's worth doing. It'll give you a long-term, SEO-friendly page that also works better for different devices.