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:
Rendering on Google Search – Google’s documentation on its Web Rendering Service
Introduction to Indexing – how Google discovers and indexes content
Learn how Google gets your site content – Support documentation on crawling & indexing
JavaScript Sites in Search Working Group – Google forum on JavaScript and Search
Jan 2017: What Crawl Budget Means for Googlebot – Google Webmaster Blog
Dec 2017: Rendering AJAX-crawling Pages – Google Webmaster Blog
Oct 2015: Deprecating our AJAX crawling scheme – Google Webmaster Blog
Explainers, Guides, and How-To’s:
Feb 2018: How Does Google Handle Javascript When Crawling, Rendering & Indexing Pages – Hobo
Jan 2018: Why View Source Still Matters and How to Quickly Compare it to a Rendered DOM – Polemic
Dec 2017: What we’ve learnt so far about using JavaScript for SEO – theWebShed
Nov 2017: How to Crawl JavaScript Websites – Sitebulb
Oct 2017: Google Shares Details About the Technology Behind Googlebot – Moz
Aug 2017: JavaScript & SEO, The Difference Between Crawling and Indexing – State of Digital
Aug 2017: Beyond Google: Are Search Engines Ready for JavaScript Crawling & Indexing? – Moz
Jun 2017: JavaScript & SEO, Making Your Bot Experience As Good As Your User Experience – Moz
Jun 2017: AngularJS SEO, Make Your Angular Site Indexable – Geoff Kenyon
May 2017: JavaScript and SEO, Best Practice Guide – Ryte
May 2017: How to Implement SEO Changes Using Google Tag Manager – Moz
Feb 2017: JavaScript SEO, Crawling, Indexierung & Auditing von JS-Webseiten – Kosch Klink Performance
Jan 2017: Introduction to Crawling JavaScript – Screaming Frog
Jan 2017: How to Combine JavaScript & SEO With Isomorphic JS – Search Engine Journal
Nov 2016: Progressive Web App SEO – Builtvisible
Oct 2016: Auditing JavaScript for SEO – Briggsby
Oct 2016: Core Principles of SEO for JavaScript – Briggsby
Aug 2016: JavaScript Framework SEO in AngularJS – Builtvisible
Aug 2016: Angular JS and SEO – DeepCrawl
June 2016: Using Google Tag Manager to Dynamically Generate JSON-LD Tags – Moz
JavaScript Tests and Case Studies:
Jan 2018: JavaScript vs Crawl Budget – Elephate
Jan 2018: Hacking the Console Log To Spy on Googlebot – CodeSEO
Jan 2018: Googlebot’s Javascript random() function is deterministic – Tom Anthony
Dec 2017: Everything You Know About JavaScript Indexing is Wrong – Elephate
Dec 2017: Some of the things you know about indexing might be wrong – Ohgm
Dec 2017: More JavaScript SEO Experiments with Google Tag Manager – searchVIU
Nov 2017: Breaking the Head (Quietly) – Ohgm
Aug 2017: SPA and SEO, Google properly renders Single Page Applications – Lucamug
Aug 2017: Implement Hreflang with Google Tag Manager – searchVIU
Jul 2017: Does Google Use pre or post-DOM HTML for Hreflang? – searchVIU
Jul 2017: Pre-rendering SPA for SEO and improved perceived page speed – Gajus Kuizinas
May 2017: Early Results from Split Testing JavaScript for SEO – Distilled
May 2017: Can Google Crawl & Index JavaScript Frameworks? – Elephate
May 2017: Evidence of the Surprising State of JavaScript Indexing – Moz
May 2017: Optimizing AngularJS Single-Page Applications for Googlebot Crawlers – Moz
May 2017: Long Term CSS JavaScript Hidden Text Experiment – Reboot
Jan 2017: JavaScript & SEO Backfire, a Hulu.com Case Study – Elephate
Oct 2016: SEO vs React, Web Crawlers Are Smarter Than You Think – Patrick Hund
Aug 2016: SEO and JavaScript Redirects: Evidence they do pass PageRank – Branded3
Mar 2016: SEO friendly React.js app architecture for multimedia content – Builtvisible
Nov 2015: Can You Now Trust Google To Crawl Ajax Sites? – Search Engine Land
Oct 2015: JSCrawlability.com – Growth Gauge
May 2015: We Tested How Googlebot Crawls Javascript – Search Engine Land
Presentations and Videos:
Feb 2018: The Rise of JavaScript and What it Means for SEO – Patrick Hathaway [pres]
Dec 2017: SEO Best Practices for JavaScript Based Websites – Max Prin [vid]
Dec 2017: Search and Javascript Sites – Google Developers India [vid]
Dec 2017: Understanding the impact of JavaScript on SEO – Botify [pres]
Nov 2017: JavaScript & SEO, The Real Problems – Barry Adams [pres]
Oct 2017: JavaScript Indexing and SEO: The Naked Truth – Bartosz Góralewicz [pres]
Sep 2016: SEO best practices and requirements for modern sites – John Mueller [vid]
Oct 2015: SEO and JavaScript, New Challenges – Eric Wu [vid]
