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Google Now Searches JavaScript

Posted by timothy on from the watch-for-the-scriptview-vans dept.

mikejuk writes "Google has been improving the way that its Googlebot searches dynamic web pages for some time — but it seems to be causing some added interest just at the moment. In the past Google has encouraged developers to avoid using JavaScript to deliver content or links to content because of the difficulty of indexing dynamic content. Over time, however, the Googlebot has incorporated ways of searching content that is provided via JavaScript. Now it seems that it has got so good at the task Google is asking us to allow the Googlebot to scan the JavaScript used by our sites. Working with JavaScript means that the Googlebot has to actually download and run the scripts and this is more complicated than you might think. This has led to speculation of whether or not it might be possible to include JavaScript on a site that could use the Google cloud to compute something. For example, imagine that you set up a JavaScript program to compute the n-digits of Pi, or a BitCoin miner, and had the result formed into a custom URL — which the Googlebot would then try to access as part of its crawl. By looking at, say, the query part of the URL in the log you might be able to get back a useful result."

5 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Incremental and/or parallel computing? by SlovakWakko · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You can always cut the whole process into smaller steps, each providing URL that will initiate the next step. Or you can provide several URLs and have the Google cloud compute a problem for you in parallel...

    1. Re:Incremental and/or parallel computing? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Even if this is possible, you would certainly be violating Google's guidelines and have your site blacklisted from Googlebot pretty quickly. Furthermore, you could be charge with theft of services.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    2. Re:Incremental and/or parallel computing? by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Anyone wanting to do this would be doing it on a dedicate website. They wont care about the domain or IP address being blacklisted from Google. And good luck with the theft of service charge, they never asked Google to index them. They did not even agree to any terms of service from Google. As I said, good luck.

  2. A much more likely application by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Send Google JavaScript which generates different results for Google than for normal visitors, in order to rank up the site.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  3. Google has been doing this for quite some time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Although maybe not quite in the same context. Google used to display javascript-munged email addresses in their search results until some of the larger sites involved, such as Rootsweb, complained.