Listing ajax data in search engines ?

Question

Is there any way to allow search engines to list JSON or XML ajax data ?

Answer 1

Hmm, no, not really. Search engines crawl your HTML and they don't really bother clicking around or even just loading your page into a browser and having the AJAX magic happen. Flash and JSON objects are by themselves invisible to search engines, and to get them visible, you have to transform them in some HTML.

Answer 2

I don't think there is a way to directly allow crawlers to index XML and JSON.

I would recommend trying to design your site using progressive enhancement. First, make all of the JSON and XML available in HTML form for users who don't use javascript. These users include some people with disabilities and the crawlers used by search engines. That will ensure your content is searchable.

Once you have that working and tested, add your ajax functionality. You might do this by serving HTML, XML and JSON from a single URL using content negotiation, or you might have seperate URLs.

Another graceful solution is to implement your ajax calls as requests to full HTML pages and have your javascript only use the bit that it's interested in e.g. a div with id "content. The suitability of this solution would depend on your exact requirements.

Answer 3

The newest technique for getting AJAX requests to be listed in search engines is to ensure they have their own URL. This technique stems from the same one utilized by flash applications where each page has a unique identifier, preceded by a pound (#) sign.

There are currently a few jQuery plugins which will allow you to manage this:

• SWFAddress - Deep Linking for Flash & AJAX
• jQuery History Plugin