In my last post I wrote about the downfalls of flash, search engine optimization, and direct linking. Now it's time to talk about AJAX and web 2.0 and how search engines perceive the two. First of alll, let's define AJAX and web 2.0.
AJAX is an achronym for Asynchronous Javascript And XML. It provides web clients (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari) a mechanism for delivering rich experiences for its users. Google Suggest is an example of an application that uses AJAX. As you type, suggestions appear that you can click on to quickly select your topic. Notice that the entire screen doesn't refresh. Instead of the browser making a call back to the original web server for a whole new page (including suggestions) it only updates the list of suggestions by passing the typed characters to the server - using AJAX. The amount of data is very small and the data returned is also very small.... thus very fast.
AJAX enables the concept of web 2.0 - the rich user experience. It is a great idea to build in a rich experience that makes it easier and more inuitive for users to interact. Our web content management system has an enormous amount of AJAX programming. But the problem is with search engines.
AJAX is based on Javascript and Javascript is based on user events (e.g. mouse-up, mouse-down, click, etc). Search engines don't have the capability to launch javascript events which means if your website's navigation is based on AJAX (which, again, uses Javascript) then search engines will not be able to index it. This means the website pages you want people to find will not be found because they were never indexed.
The moral of the story is to use AJAX sparingly if you want your website to be indexed by search engines and definitely do not setup your navigation with AJAX or Javascript. Check with a knowledgeable software developer and SEO firm and ask them if your site is SEO friendly.
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