Can Google see your content? – Alexa Flash Briefing Skill (SEO Tips)
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO Tips today.
Can Google see all of your content?
I seem to be running into a lot of clients and sites where they think all their content is being seen by Google and it turns out, unfortunately, it’s not.
So here’s an at-home tip for you today about how you can check this on your own. If you go to the mobile-friendly test tool provided by Google and put your URL into that tool (or anybody’s it doesn’t even need to be a URL you own) you can see what Google sees when it looks at that URL.
Does the screenshot look different than what it looks like when you are viewing it?
So here’s the other thing you might want to try just to double-check that you’re really looking at an issue. Go ahead and download the web developer toolbar for chrome and in there you can disable JavaScript. Once you have disabled JavaScript, reload that URL.
Can you still click on everything? Does everything still look okay? If not that’s because it’s powered by JavaScript.
Now Google says they can index JavaScript but what really happens is this:
- Googlebot comes around the first time finds all the text, notes that there IS JavaScript and then leaves and then it tells the renderer to come on back and go ahead and render that JavaScript.
- The render then returns to your site, renders the JavaScript is now able to see what looks like text and links on the page.
The delay between that first moment and the second time when the renderer comes back can be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months — it kind of depends on the authority of your website. In my experience, I’ve noticed that there’s a real discrepancy and how well Google can actually see the JavaScript.
It is definitely best practice to put your content on a regular old URL versus loading it with any sort of fancy JavaScript if you want your content indexed quickly. And remember, the content needs to be added to the index before you can start ranking and appearing in Google search.
So that’s it for today. Thanks for listening and come back tomorrow for more SEO Tips.
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