Googlebot and Document.Write

With JavaScript/AJAX being used to place dynamic content in pages, I was wondering how Google indexed web page content that was placed in a page using the JavaScript "document.write" method. I created a page with six unique words in it. Two were in the plain HTML; two were in a script within the page document; and two were in a script that was externally sourced from a different server. The page appeared in the Google index late last night and I just wrote up the results.

Comments

The Results:

[XanC]

Save a click: No, Google does not "see" text inserted by Javascript.

Re:The Results:

[temojen]

And rightly so. You should be hiding & un-hiding or inserting elements using the DOM, never using document.write (which F's up your DOM tree).

Re:How does document.write mess up your DOM tree?

[XanC]

If you're using document.write, you're writing directly into the document stream, which only works in text/html, not an XHTML MIME type, because there's no way to guarantee the document will continue to be valid.

In this day and age, document.write should never be used, in favor of the more verbose but more future-proof document.createElement and document.createTextNode notation.