Ask HN: What can Search Engines Crawl?

[DanielBMarkham]

Let's say I have a site that provides dynamic data, for our example let's say stock prices, to web consumers. Because this data is so dynamic, I'm using JSON to pull it from a server and Javascript to stuff it into an empty html file.

My question: What do the crawlers see when they visit? A blank page? Or do they execute the Javascript on page load and get the dynamic material as well?

[oscardelben]

if they don't understand javascript, they'll see the page as if you would disable javascript.

[pbhjpbhj → oscardelben]

I'm guessing he had that one sorted, no offence.

Google definitely does some javascript parsing but I don't know how much. You could try dropping in some "googlewhacks" (unique strings) that you can then try and find on your search engine of choice.