
Killing SEO by Using Angular - jmngomes
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/warning-youre-killing-seo-efforts-using-angular-js/142031/
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timvdalen
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2015/10/deprecatin...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2015/10/deprecating-
our-ajax-crawling-scheme.html)

>tl;dr: We are no longer recommending the AJAX crawling proposal we made back
in 2009.

Google is now saying they will probably be able to just index your Angular app
without any extra effort on your side.

~~~
compbio
Do note that this is the most basic of SEO: Actually having the search engine
access your content, so it can index it.

It is, and has been, a far cry from actual optimization: Giving your content
the best possible ranking it deserves.

Want to be able to rank for an exact sentence match? Sure, use Angular. Want
to actually compete for rankings? Do not build a single-page Angular
application.

Solid SEO is about optimizing for users, thinking: "would I do this if search
engines did not exist?". SEO for Angular apps has become: "Detect and redirect
one of the major search engines to a text alternative".

~~~
timvdalen
I interpret the above blog post as Google basically saying that the playing
field is now leveled. If they can fully render client-side applications, why
would there be any downsides to using a SPA?

It seems like the days of

>"Detect and redirect one of the major search engines to a text alternative"

are over

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mrcarrot
I'd be amazed if anyone with no knowledge of Angular (e.g. the "marketers"
that are apparently its audience) comes out of reading this article _less_
confused.

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blacksmith_tb
To look at this differently, though, I would think that at some level GOOG and
the other engines want to be able to accurately index content for their users,
however it's generated on a given site. Obviously in past this tended to go
the other way, a site's static content appeared to be one thing, but client-
side scripts did various sneaky things to it, which is one reason Google
traditionally processed js and css to some degree. But though that's still a
concern, it's actually less of a problem if they are just running a webdriver
over your site to figure out what it is.

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JFlash
Google's search definitely renders JS. The question is how much does it impact
your page's rank to have it download and execute that JS?

I'm not sure, so I'd rather not think about it and just render my JS server
side. React does with minimal effort
[https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/top-level-
api.html#rea...](https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/top-level-
api.html#reactdomserver). This also has the added benefit of making you think
what the UX is like for people browsing without JS enabled.

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jand
If you want code snippets included as (distorted) pictures inside an article -
here you will get it.

On the other hand: I learned that there are quite powerful pre-rendering
libraries. That was nice.

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axx
I have no idea why anyone would build content pages with angular (or any other
client-side framework). It's just stupid.

Client-side Frameworks work perfectly for "internal" (say: everything behind a
login) Apps. Too many people follow every trend because it seems like the way
to do things, or because it's just cool. Sometimes you really should think
about the implications of your stack decisions.

~~~
WalterSear
Because they are no longer 'client-side' frameworks, in the strictest sense of
the term. Server-side render is kind of de rigueur these days.

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tim333
>Search engines do not render JS

seems iffy. Here's Google explaining how they do render JS
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/underst...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/understanding-
web-pages-better.html)

~~~
Grue3
It's wrong to assume that Google is the only search engine. This kind of
thinking leads to monopolies. And making your site readable without JS is a
good practice anyway.

~~~
JFlash
All he did was provide a counter-example to "Search engines do not render JS".

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WalterSear
AKA, killing SEO by using Angular wrong.

We are using react, but the problem is the same. Thank to server-side
rendering, we are perfectly comfortable with our microdata implementation, and
have push 15+ million pages into Google search map.

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wooptoo
This piece is very poorly written.

