[Case Study] Does Googlebot follow javascript generated links?

var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a'); links[0].href = 'http://mydomain.tld/mypage';

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Han_Solo said:

I found a forum that allow put HTML tags in signature. It's possible to include javascript code. I made a simple script that replace one navigation link in forum header with my URL:

Code:

[FONT=monospace][/FONT]

Users (with enabled js in web browser) will see link to my site, but does Googlebot follow it? I made that link to subpage created 2 years ago, but not indexed yet (it has any backlinks and isn't linked from other pages on this domain). In next days I'll check that the page was indexed or not and post update.

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thejake said:

Googlebot more or less adds links to its "link inventory" for a page when parsing js, but generally doesn't apply DOM manipulations when indexing the page, but does thumbnail after all the dynamic stuff that they'll do has done its business. It's tried to snoop links from js since before it could parse js, so something like document.write('<a href="/blerg">blerg</a>') has been spiderable for a long time. From what I observe on lyrics sites they mostly disregard any dynamic content that involves an origin change.

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thejake said:

Googlebot more or less adds links to its "link inventory" for a page when parsing js, but generally doesn't apply DOM manipulations when indexing the page, but does thumbnail after all the dynamic stuff that they'll do has done its business. It's tried to snoop links from js since before it could parse js, so something like document.write('<a href="/blerg">blerg</a>') has been spiderable for a long time. From what I observe on lyrics sites they mostly disregard any dynamic content that involves an origin change.

Click to expand...

Han_Solo said:

I found a forum that allow put HTML tags in signature. It's possible to include javascript code. I made a simple script that replace one navigation link in forum header with my URL:



Users (with enabled js in web browser) will see link to my site, but does Googlebot follow it? I made that link to subpage created 2 years ago, but not indexed yet (it has any backlinks and isn't linked from other pages on this domain). In next days I'll check that the page was indexed or not and post update.

Click to expand...