The crawling, indexing, and ranking of webpages that rely heavily on JavaScript is a hot topic in the SEO industry at the moment. There are lots of people performing tests and sharing their results, as well as opinion pieces and perspectives from outside of the SEO echo chamber. And of course we have official documentation from search engines themselves, with varying degrees of usefulness.
Because there is no one single resource to send people to when they want to learn about JavaScript and SEO, we created this list of articles and resources which will be continuously updated when new content is published. If you know of a resource that should be on this list, please mail us via our contact form.
Official Google Documentation:
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Rendering on Google Search – Google’s documentation on its Web Rendering Service
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Introduction to Indexing – how Google discovers and indexes content
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Learn how Google gets your site content – Support documentation on crawling & indexing
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JavaScript Sites in Search Working Group – Google forum on JavaScript and Search
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Jan 2017: What Crawl Budget Means for Googlebot – Google Webmaster Blog
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Dec 2017: Rendering AJAX-crawling Pages – Google Webmaster Blog
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Oct 2015: Deprecating our AJAX crawling scheme – Google Webmaster Blog
Explainers, Guides, and How-To’s:
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Feb 2018: How Does Google Handle Javascript When Crawling, Rendering & Indexing Pages – Hobo
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Jan 2018: Why View Source Still Matters and How to Quickly Compare it to a Rendered DOM – Polemic
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Dec 2017: What we’ve learnt so far about using JavaScript for SEO – theWebShed
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Nov 2017: How to Crawl JavaScript Websites – Sitebulb
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Oct 2017: Google Shares Details About the Technology Behind Googlebot – Moz
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Aug 2017: JavaScript & SEO, The Difference Between Crawling and Indexing – State of Digital
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Aug 2017: Beyond Google: Are Search Engines Ready for JavaScript Crawling & Indexing? – Moz
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Jun 2017: JavaScript & SEO, Making Your Bot Experience As Good As Your User Experience – Moz
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Jun 2017: AngularJS SEO, Make Your Angular Site Indexable – Geoff Kenyon
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May 2017: JavaScript and SEO, Best Practice Guide – Ryte
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May 2017: How to Implement SEO Changes Using Google Tag Manager – Moz
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Feb 2017: JavaScript SEO, Crawling, Indexierung & Auditing von JS-Webseiten – Kosch Klink Performance
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Jan 2017: Introduction to Crawling JavaScript – Screaming Frog
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Jan 2017: How to Combine JavaScript & SEO With Isomorphic JS – Search Engine Journal
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Nov 2016: Progressive Web App SEO – Builtvisible
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Oct 2016: Auditing JavaScript for SEO – Briggsby
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Oct 2016: Core Principles of SEO for JavaScript – Briggsby
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Aug 2016: JavaScript Framework SEO in AngularJS – Builtvisible
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Aug 2016: Angular JS and SEO – DeepCrawl
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June 2016: Using Google Tag Manager to Dynamically Generate JSON-LD Tags – Moz
JavaScript Tests and Case Studies:
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Jan 2018: JavaScript vs Crawl Budget – Elephate
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Jan 2018: Hacking the Console Log To Spy on Googlebot – CodeSEO
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Jan 2018: Googlebot’s Javascript random() function is deterministic – Tom Anthony
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Dec 2017: Everything You Know About JavaScript Indexing is Wrong – Elephate
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Dec 2017: Some of the things you know about indexing might be wrong – Ohgm
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Dec 2017: More JavaScript SEO Experiments with Google Tag Manager – searchVIU
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Nov 2017: Breaking the Head (Quietly) – Ohgm
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Aug 2017: SPA and SEO, Google properly renders Single Page Applications – Lucamug
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Aug 2017: Implement Hreflang with Google Tag Manager – searchVIU
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Jul 2017: Does Google Use pre or post-DOM HTML for Hreflang? – searchVIU
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Jul 2017: Pre-rendering SPA for SEO and improved perceived page speed – Gajus Kuizinas
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May 2017: Early Results from Split Testing JavaScript for SEO – Distilled
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May 2017: Can Google Crawl & Index JavaScript Frameworks? – Elephate
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May 2017: Evidence of the Surprising State of JavaScript Indexing – Moz
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May 2017: Optimizing AngularJS Single-Page Applications for Googlebot Crawlers – Moz
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May 2017: Long Term CSS JavaScript Hidden Text Experiment – Reboot
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Jan 2017: JavaScript & SEO Backfire, a Hulu.com Case Study – Elephate
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Oct 2016: SEO vs React, Web Crawlers Are Smarter Than You Think – Patrick Hund
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Aug 2016: SEO and JavaScript Redirects: Evidence they do pass PageRank – Branded3
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Mar 2016: SEO friendly React.js app architecture for multimedia content – Builtvisible
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Nov 2015: Can You Now Trust Google To Crawl Ajax Sites? – Search Engine Land
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Oct 2015: JSCrawlability.com – Growth Gauge
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May 2015: We Tested How Googlebot Crawls Javascript – Search Engine Land
Presentations and Videos:
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Feb 2018: The Rise of JavaScript and What it Means for SEO – Patrick Hathaway [pres]
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Dec 2017: SEO Best Practices for JavaScript Based Websites – Max Prin [vid]
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Dec 2017: Search and Javascript Sites – Google Developers India [vid]
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Dec 2017: Understanding the impact of JavaScript on SEO – Botify [pres]
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Nov 2017: JavaScript & SEO, The Real Problems – Barry Adams [pres]
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Oct 2017: JavaScript Indexing and SEO: The Naked Truth – Bartosz Góralewicz [pres]
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Sep 2016: SEO best practices and requirements for modern sites – John Mueller [vid]
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Oct 2015: SEO and JavaScript, New Challenges – Eric Wu [vid]
