Search Engines and Javascript

[Fugetaboutit]

A friend's web site has only one menu on each page, which is
completely hidden with Javascript disabled. His Home Page Google
PageRank is 3 and the other pages are either 2, 1, or 0. What I'm
trying to grasp is how these other pages get any ranking at all.
According to Google, there are no backlinks to his site.

Can anyone explain?

 

[Justin Koivisto]

A friend's web site has only one menu on each page, which is
completely hidden with Javascript disabled. His Home Page Google
PageRank is 3 and the other pages are either 2, 1, or 0. What I'm
trying to grasp is how these other pages get any ranking at all.
According to Google, there are no backlinks to his site.

Can anyone explain?

Quite a ways back, I had a similar question, and the answer I had gotten
was similar to:

A. Google only shows back links with a PR > 3 or hides other for some
secret reason

B. Google hasn't updated its back links database for a while, and there
really are links that just aren't showing up yet in Google.

It was enough to satisfy my curiosity - especially since about a week
later I had a PR boost and about 3 dozen back links started appearing in
Google.

 

[John Bokma]

A friend's web site has only one menu on each page, which is
completely hidden with Javascript disabled. His Home Page Google
PageRank is 3 and the other pages are either 2, 1, or 0. What I'm
trying to grasp is how these other pages get any ranking at all.

Depends on how well the other pages are hidden. A search engine might be
able to extract an URL from:

<a href="javascript: ......... http://..... ...">

It's just some extra parsing. Of course, by moving the javascript into
OnClick, and using a normal href, you make more people (and probably SE
bots) happy.

Other options:

- visited the pages with Google toolbar on (IIRC this works)
- other people have linked to the page(s)

According to Google, there are no backlinks to his site.

Possible, Google doesn't list them all. Try yahoo (and even then).

 

[Fugetaboutit]

A friend's web site has only one menu on each page, which is
completely hidden with Javascript disabled. His Home Page Google
PageRank is 3 and the other pages are either 2, 1, or 0. What I'm
trying to grasp is how these other pages get any ranking at all.
According to Google, there are no backlinks to his site.

Can anyone explain?

Thanks, people, those are good answers I hadn't thought of; much
appreciated.

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ [Justin Koivisto] on Monday 29 August 2005 21:32 \__

Quite a ways back, I had a similar question, and the answer I had gotten
was similar to:

A. Google only shows back links with a PR > 3 or hides other for some
secret reason

Not necessarily true. Some pages with low PageRank would get displayed too
so a "fallacy" is what you might label the above.

B. Google hasn't updated its back links database for a while, and there
really are links that just aren't showing up yet in Google.

True, but predictions say that in accordance with previous update cycles,
Google should update IBL's very shortly.

It was enough to satisfy my curiosity - especially since about a week
later I had a PR boost and about 3 dozen back links started appearing in
Google.

There are datacentre inconsistencies, particularly around the time when
updates take place.

All the best guys,

Roy