Google Getting Better at JavaScript - Avoid these Common Pitfalls

No matter how good Google has claimed to be at accurately crawling and indexing javascript there have always been problems. Well, Google continues to fight the good fight and according to a recent announcement they're getting better than ever at crawling JavaScript encoded sites.

We have been gradually improving how we do this for some time. In the past few months, our indexing system has been rendering a substantial number of web pages more like an average user’s browser with JavaScript turned on.

Google went on to warn that their system isn't perfect and if you're working with Javascript then you can help them by avoiding these common pitfalls.

• Don't block your CSS or Javascript files. If your JavaScript or CSS are blocked with robots.txt, Googlebot can't crawl them and will not see your site like the average user would. It's especially important to allow Google to crawl these files if you have a mobile Web site so that they can see that your pages are optimized for mobile.
• Be sure your server is set up to handle the volume of crawl requests.
• Have your site degrade gracefully. This will help users enjoy your content even if their browser doesn't have compatible JavaScript implementations. It also helps visitors with JavaScript disabled as well as search engines that can't execute JavaScript yet.
• Keep it Simple. Sometimes the JavaScript may be too complex or arcane for Googlebot to properly crawl, which will result in improper or complete lack of indexing of your content.
• Be sure your Javascript includes actual text content. Some JavaScript removes content from the page rather than adding, which prevents Google from indexing the content.

While most SEO's have worked to minimize the use of Javascript for things like menus and other important navigation functions in the past to avoid issues with Crawling, this change should have little effect. But do be aware and on the lookout for problems that might popup when Goo...