SEO Tycoon

**dartdesign** · 04-01-2007, 11:50 AM

Hello,
Is it possible a ranking to be affected because website is based on JSP ? If yes is there a way to improve it or rewrite the pages similar to mod-rewrite ?

King Regards...

**stOx** · 04-01-2007, 12:06 PM

Search engines dont care how the page is generated, As long as they can read it.
if your scripts output HTML they wont rank any worse than PHP or HTML.

It's only things thast search engines cant read, Like JS and flash, That may have indexing problems.

**travelagent** · 04-01-2007, 01:22 PM

stOx is absolutely correct!

**ADAM Web Design** · 04-01-2007, 01:27 PM

What st0x said.

Where some of the confusion may lie in your case is that search engines won't always crawl dynamically generated pages with too many or unusual querystring parameters (e.g. the id= querystring). You will also run into ranking issues if you have a session hash in your URL.

**chrishirst** · 04-01-2007, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stOx

they wont rank any worse than PHP or HTML

Or any better!

**astrojith** · 04-02-2007, 03:51 AM

Scripting languages like PHP, ASP and JSP are server-side languages which are embedded to your HTML page. When user visits your page, the page is processed by the server. When processing, if it encounters a JSP, the server goes in JSP mode and parses the instructions and it goes on like this and as a result, we get a pure HTML page as the output which is then send to the user who requested the page. This works the same way for Search Engine spiders. The spiders get the pure HTML page. But, as of now, search bots are unable to crawl Javascript.

Many people come with this doubt since Java Server Pages and Java Script may sound similar or because people get confused by client-side scripting and server-side scripting. Normally, server side scripting will not affect SEO while client side scripting may. Isn't this right ?

**chrishirst** · 04-02-2007, 06:45 AM

Quote:

search bots are unable to crawl Javascript

Not true, javascript can be crawled, it's only text after all.
Just that SE crawlers/indexers do not execute (run) javascript.

**astrojith** · 04-02-2007, 09:13 AM

Quote:

Not true, javascript can be crawled, it's only text after all.

Well, it is text. But isn't it code ? I mean, if spiders can't execute the code, why would they index it ? I mean, Adsense ads won't count as link. And, I don't think search engines would index the code. But again, its just me and I'm not an expert.

**willcode4beer** · 04-02-2007, 09:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrojith

Well, it is text. But isn't it code ? I mean, if spiders can't execute the code, why would they index it ? I mean, Adsense ads won't count as link. And, I don't think search engines would index the code. But again, its just me and I'm not an expert.

Maybe to clarify. They can but, don't (as far as we know).
For example, if you use HttpUnit to test your web site, it can execute javascript and even follow links created with javascript. It uses Netscape's open source javascript interpreter, rhino.jar.
It is trivial to write a spider using these libraries. As to whether or not search engine spiders do this, we don't really know.
But, they could if the writers wanted them to.

I would guess they wouldn't for security reasons. Mainly because, executing random code is generally not a great idea. There are so many sites with really bad javascript that an accidental denial of service could occur with infinite loops, bad setTimeout's and setInterval's to just get started.

**chrishirst** · 04-02-2007, 09:52 AM

Adsense code has to be executed before it becomes a link.
That's the purpose of the external scripts that get called

the whole SE process is made up of several software agents, each having a specialised job.

All crawlers do, as one of the software agents, is to request a page from a URI, grab the source that is sent out and store it back in the same DC that the crawler was sent out from. Then the same agent is sent off somewhere else.
Crawlers should get exactly the same as what you would get for a view source, unless there is some UA or IP cloaking going off.

Another agents job could well be to examine javascript code in the retrieved source and flag it for doorway style redirects

**astrojith** · 04-02-2007, 10:17 AM

Quote:

Another agents job could well be to examine javascript code in the retrieved source and flag it for doorway style redirects

Would be glad if you can explain what this is. And, if I write a Javascript code which outputs data to the browser or page, I don't think a search engine would be able to index that output. Thats what I meant.

**astrojith** · 04-02-2007, 10:19 AM

Quote:

I would guess they wouldn't for security reasons. Mainly because, executing random code is generally not a great idea.

This would make the lives of Blackhat SEOs easy.

**chrishirst** · 04-02-2007, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrojith

Would be glad if you can explain what this is.

What doorway redirects ?
It's an age old method employed by old style "SEO" software and some new "SEO" software as well. Have a page stuffed with keywords, phrases etc and then have an "onLoad" event to send browsers to the page for real visitors, crawlers/indexer not being JS enabled don't get to the visitor page. This is the "sneaky redirects" and "doorway pages" in the webmaster guidelines.

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrojith

And, if I write a Javascript code which outputs data to the browser or page, I don't think a search engine would be able to index that output. Thats what I meant.

No they wouldn't because they can't trigger the event that creates the content.

It's the usual mix-up between cause and effect.

The effect being the content isn't indexed, due to the cause of crawlers/indexers not executing the javascript

**stOx** · 04-04-2007, 10:47 AM

A while back there were stories about google bot requesting external CSS files, Probably looking for hidden text and such. I suspect they will soon start doing the same with JS files making sure nobody isn't doing anything they shouldn't. Thought i doubt they will be executing JS and indexing it's output for some time to come.

**willcode4beer** · 04-04-2007, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stOx

A while back there were stories about google bot requesting external CSS files, Probably looking for hidden text and such. I suspect they will soon start doing the same with JS files making sure nobody isn't doing anything they shouldn't. Thought i doubt they will be executing JS and indexing it's output for some time to come.

My logs show the googlebot requesting javascript and css files. However, its much more rare than the normal page requests. Last CSS request was 21 Mar, last page, yesterday.