Googlebot can now execute AJAX and Javascript

Googlebot can now execute Javascript to Index some comments that are dragged into your webpages dynamically. That’s the news from Matt Cutts’ twitter on the 1st of November.

Is this a good thing or should we be worried? Well it’s hard to say because the little information we have about this doesn’t really say what Google intends to do with this indexed data.

Pulling external comments in by AJAX, or by other Javascript allows us to do a number of things with our pages that were useful. For one comments could load dynamically after the important parts of the page have loaded and also as users scroll: that way the page loaded faster but if users really want to read all 300 comments on our blog then they can do (just remember to put the add comment forma at the TOP of the list if you do this :o) ).

For SEO, Dynamically loaded comments are great for peace of mind, you can just let people shout, argue (and inevitably, Spam) to their hearts content while you drop in at your leisure to clean the inbox of offensive or spammy comments, plus as Google couldn’t read these comments you had no problem with people trying to steal your hard earned pagerank.

Potentially this could all change, and it could change the playing field for a little while.

If Google is intending to index these AJAX and javascript loaded comments (and firstly how well does Googlebot know that these are comments?) AND follow any links in this dynamically loaded content, then there is the potential for many sites to find that what they thought was a nice, secure bucket of link juice could turn into a Pagerank Collander, feeding a myriad of spam sites with enough authority and recognition to send spam content rocketing to the top of the SERPs.

On the other hand it could just be that Google will simply read the content, note the links (as they do with nofollwed links) but not pass on the vote in favour of the spam. That would be loads better, right?

Er, maybe.

The problem with Peace of Mind, such as feeling confident in your Javascript loaded comments never causing you a problem in your SEO, is that it brings laziness, what was a daily check for spam comments turns into a weekly, turns into a monthly, turns into “Its safe so I can’t be bothered to check it ever again” kind of schedule.

Well even if Google isn’t going to follow those spam links you’d best get checking and deleting the billions of comments offering Russian brides and black market Viagra, because if that volume of content gets indexed its quickly going to water down your carefully crafted blog of page of content and take your reputation with Google waaaay down.

So unless further enlightenment reveals that Mr Cutts and the good people at Google have thought about contingency plans for this change, get prepared for a few busy days of deleting spam!