In order for Google to recognize a hyper-link on your website, does it have to be written in a specific java script?

[Greg_Barnhardt]

Does it have to read as the following script?

KBB 2018 Best Buy Overall Winner

[effectdigital]

Just so you are aware, the code-sample which you supplied is HTML and not JavaScript (or for that matter, any type of script. Scripting languages include JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Perl etc).

You may be asking one of two things (I think!):

1) Is there a set HTML format for hyperlinks which Google knows how to read?

Yes, and you can find **information all about ** conventional use of the <a></a><a>(HTML) tag here:</a>

<a></a>

<a></a>

• <a></a>https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_a.asp

HTML is a static language and is not (unlike many scripting languages) 'object oriented'. You don't define "<a>" and as such</a> <a>is not interpreted based upon your programmed parameters.</a> <a>always means the same thing (to a a web browser). Sure stuff like CSS can style links in different ways, JavaScript can modify</a> <a>tags by injecting event-tracking attributes etc (also a common use of jQuery) but fundamentally the usage of</a> <a>is</a> <a>(mostly) universally agreed. So yes - links are coded according to conventions and Google will interpret those widely accepted conventional use-cases, as well as a few more experimental deployments (possibly through error handling in Google's algorithms). In general, you should follow W3C / W3 Schools guidelines. There are many forms of link (no-followed links, text links, image links) and all are valid but yes - they are predetermined</a>

<a>2) This is the HTML which my JavaScript will output - is it ok?

Yeah it's fine dude. If you can handle JS, you can handle HTML (it's way simpler). One thing though, although Google can deploy rendered (JS-enabled) crawling, that involves using headless browsers and such to render the 'modified' source code (so, what you see in 'inspect element' is the modified source. What you see in "view page source" is different, that's the pre-modified or base-source code).

Usually speaking this takes 10x longer than simple DOM / base-source scrapes. As such if Google were to deploy that tech on every crawl for every page on the web, the efficiency hit to their 'index the web' mission would be colossal. Many studies show that Google will not render JS on all sites (especially one perceived to be low value). Even on sites where they will use this tech, they won't deploy it all of the time. There really is no substitute for forcing your links and content to be readable in the base-source code (un-modified). It's way better for crawlers, way more efficient for them to work with. Just because Google ' can' do something, it doesn't mean they always will. It doesn't mean it's a good idea to ignore basic SEO principles!

Hope that helps</a>

[Greg_Barnhardt]

Thank you, that was extremely insightful and  helpful.

[effectdigital]

Not a problem I find that all too often, if the question is a bit ambiguous - people will ignore it. If there are only a handful of interpretations, I will still try to answer