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Examples of Sites Using Google’s Ajax Indexing Specification

May 11, 2010
by Gradiva Couzin

Rich internet applications (RIA), using Ajax, Flash, or other methods, have always been a problem for search engines. That’s because search bots don’t have the ability to access content interactively the way humans do. In 2009, Google introduced a proposal for indexing Ajax. We’ve got clients using lots of Ajax, so naturally, we’ve been watching closely to see what sites are adopting Google’s specification, and how it’s working out for them.

If you need the background on Google’s Ajax crawling specification, here it is in a few bullets:

In October of 2009, Google proposed a method for developing Ajax-based sites so that the content in those sites would be crawlable.
Vanessa Fox provided some helpful interpretation on Search Engine Land: “Google May Be Crawling AJAX Now – How To Best Take Advantage Of It.“
For those who are seriously considering implementation, you can read Google’s full specification.

Public Service Announcement: Because we have a few clients who are considering this specification, we reached out to Google and were pleasantly surprised that they were responsive to our questions regarding implementation. Google’s eagerness to encourage web-wide adoption of the specification means that they may be more open than you might expect in terms of communicating with early adopters. If you are seriously considering implementing Google’s Ajax crawling specification, there is no better time to reach out to Google directly with your technical questions.

Here are some examples of sites using Google’s Ajax indexing specification, and a look at their current indexing status in the Google search engine:

Holiday Inn

The site Holidayinn.com appears to have implemented Google’s Ajax crawling specification (we’ll call it Google-Ajax for short) to a limited extent.

An example of the Google-Ajax protocol can be seen on this page:

http://www.holidayinn.com/hotels/us/en/san-francisco/sfocc/hoteldetail

The Google-Ajax links can be seen by hovering over the links labeled: Rooms, Amenities, Dining and so on. “Amenities” links to /hoteldetail#!Amenities , “Dining” links to /hoteldetail#!Dining, and so on.

In each of these URLs, the fully rendered javascript can be seen by replacing “#!” with “_escaped_fragment_=”, as seen here:
http://www.holidayinn.com/hotels/us/en/san-francisco/sfocc/hoteldetail?_escaped_fragment_=Amenities — this is the fully generated page that Google uses for indexing purposes.

You can see the “Dining” page in Google’s search results, here:

At this writing, Holiday Inn’s Google-Ajax pages have been live for weeks, but these pages are frustratingly hard to find in Google’s index.We do not know whether the incomplete indexing we’ve observed is because of a glitch in implementation, or if Google’s robot simply hasn’t gotten around to visiting all of these sub-pages.

Facebook

Facebook appears to have fully implemented Google-Ajax. After some digging, we were able to find examples of Google-Ajax URLs indexed in Google, as seen here:

Facebook is an interesting case study, because in addition to implementing Google’s crawling specification, the site also has alternate content that is browsable without javascript (we call this “degraded” content). After several weeks of watching Google’s index, we are finding that the degraded pages are far more prevalent in Google’s index than the Google-Ajax pages. It’s redundant to have fully degraded content and Google-Ajax in place, so we wonder: is Facebook planning to keep this redundancy for the sake of Yahoo! and Bing? (There is no official word yet on whether Yahoo! and Bing will support this specification.) Or is Facebook holding off on getting rid of its degraded content until it feels more confident about Google-Ajax? Or are other factors at play?

Google Itself

An excellent example of a successful implementation of the protocol can be found at Google’s GWT showcase site:

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html

Here are some pages within the showcase:

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html#!CwCheckBox
http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html#!CwFileUpload
http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html#!CwBasicPopup

A Google site search within the Showcase section shows 154 pages have been indexed from within the Showcase – including pages that are clearly within the Ajax experience:

It’s readily apparent from looking at Google’s cached versions of these pages that Google is indexing the content on each individual page within the Ajax interactive experience on the site. We can conclude that Google web search is indexing Google-Ajax pages just like any other webpage. We would call this one a total success, which is hardly a surprise, since it’s Google’s own implementation.

It does not appear that Yahoo or Bing have indexed any of these pages.

Bookwhack.com

Bookwhack.com appears to have fully implemented Google’s Ajax Indexing Specification. Unlike the Facebook implementation, this site relies fully on the Ajax crawling specification to generate crawlable text. We’ll be watching this site closely.

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Ask the Experts: Will Facebook Links Help my Google…

April 26, 2010
by Gradiva Couzin

Lately my company has been putting a lot of time into our Facebook page and status updates. We want to encourage people to share links to our site in their status posts, but before we make that push, we’re hoping you can settle this question: Will links from status posts and fan pages help our company’s rank in Google?

A: Most Facebook status post links will not directly benefit your site’s search engine ranks.

Here’s why: the majority of Facebook individuals’ status posts are not indexable by search engines, because they’re hidden behind a login. That means, even if a status post contains a link to your website, Google, Bing, and Yahoo! won’t see that link, and won’t be able to apply any “juice” to the page on your site that is linked.

Fortunately, there are some exceptions to this rule. Links from your company’s own page (and your company’s own status posts), from other company pages, and from group or event pages, will typically be indexable by search engine and able to pass link power over to your site. (Don’t hold your breath for these links to bring a big rankings boost – most Facebook pages won’t have much link power to give). And, some Facebook users may choose privacy settings that allow search engine indexing of their status posts, which means those links will also have the ability to pass authority to your site.

Even if Facebook status links don’t directly affect SEO power, there are important direct and indirect benefits. The most obvious direct benefit is the enormous word-of-mouth power that status posts carry. We sometimes measure this benefit for our clients by setting up segments in Google Analytics that look at Facebook-sourced traffic to determine whether this audience is more likely to engage with the site and (in the case of ecommerce sites) make a purchase. There are also possible indirect benefits: As the awareness of your site is increased, it could gain links in search-engine-readable places such as blogs or social bookmarking sites.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, links from Twitter are tagged with “nofollow” attributes so that they, like Facebook status post links, probably don’t directly affect search engine ranks. However, tweets have the advantage of being fully indexed in Google, and tweets get top billing in Google’s real-time search results.

Real-time web indexing isn’t going away anytime soon, and we can only see the importance of online word-of-mouth marketing growing in coming years. Your company’s on the right track! Keep measuring the results with analytics, and keep up the good work!