Is use of javascript to simplify information architecture considered cloaking?

[JohnHillman]

We are considering using javascript to format URLs to simplify the navigation of the googlebot through our site, whilst presenting a larger number of links for the user to ensure content is accessible and easy to navigate from all parts of the site.  In other words, the user will see all internal links, but the search engine will see only those links that form our information hierarchy.

We are therefore showing the search engine different content to the user only in so far as the search engine will have a more hierarchical information architecture by virture of the fact that there will be fewer links visible to the search engine to ensure that our content is well structured and discoverable.

Would this be considered cloaking by google and would we be penalised?

[RyanKent]

The actions you describing define cloaking and would be penalized.

If that process were allowed then it would be severely abused. Sites would remove links that were less desirable such as to their privacy page. Sites might also add links.

Search engines insist upon seeing the same content that a user would see.

[Thos003]

I have to agree with Ryan. Yes it's cloaking. ... And if you get caught, you could and most likely would be penalized.

[JohnHillman]

Hi Ryan

We use a navigation bar in the header which means that there are a large number of on page links and there is no clear way to determine our information architecture from our internal link structure. i.e. many pages at different levels in our information architecture can be accessed from every page on the site.

Is this an issue?  Or will the URL structure be sufficient for the search engines to categorise our content? How can we help the search engine discover content at level 3 in our hierarchy if we insist on using a navigation bar in the header which we believe gives a good user experience?

Thanks!!

[john4math]

Ryan is right... you shouldn't do this.  If you want to help the crawlers find their way through your site, you could submit a sitemap?

[RyanKent]

Search engines will determine how deep to crawl a site based on it's importance. You can use the Domain Authority and Page Authority metrics to measure this factor.

In general, you want your content to be a maximum of 3 clicks from your landing page. If you have buried your content deeper, consider either flattening out your architecture or adding links to the buried content. It is very helpful to build external links to the deeper content which will help search engines discover those pages.

[JohnHillman]

Does the googlebot follow pagination of search results?  All our product pages are on the third tier, but their discovery would rely on google following pagination if we cannot use our original approach to infroamtion architecture (ie use javascript to channel the google bot to discover our tier 3 pages)

Thanks for your help!

[RyanKent]

Pagination is just links. Google can follow the links.

How you set up and offer your pages is important, especially for areas with a lot of pages.

If you have 40 pages of content then I would recommend a structure that offers pages something like "1,2,3,...20...40". If you don't offer a middle selection then that content will probably never be seen.