JavaScript SEO in 2024 Q&A with Martin Splitt from Google (Issues, Mistakes, Tips, Facts, & Myths) 😱

Ever wondered how JavaScript impacts SEO?

In this interview, I ask Martin Splitt from Google the most pressing JavaScript SEO questions. Martin sheds light on Googlebot's behavior, the importance of server-side rendering, and how to identify and fix JavaScript SEO issues. Watch now to level up your JavaScript SEO knowledge!

Here are the questions I asked Martin.

00:00 Introduction
00:47 Martin Splitt about his role at Google
02:22 Olga discusses the format of the interview
02:40 What is the path that Googlebot follows when it visits a page?
09:44 How does Google decide whether to index a specific page?
15:34 If in the GSC Indexing report under “Source” there is “Google Systems”, does it mean that it is Google’s fault that specific pages weren’t indexed or crawled?
17:22 Should website owners (especially large e-commerce websites) be worried about the recent spam attack, in which GSC websites see lots of 404 pages ending with /1000?
18:50 Can a small website (10K URLs) run into crawl budget issues if its canonicals and URLs with parameters are messed up?
20:21 What is the time difference between Googlebot crawling and rendering a page?
21:02 What will Googlebot index if the content on the page changes every second?
24:35 Is it possible that JavaScript rendering is kind of off for a specific site for weeks or months while Google only takes into account the source code?
25:29 What does Googlebot do if there is a “no-index” tag in the source code and “index,follow” in the rendered HTML?
26:17 What does Googlebot do if there is an “index” tag in the source and “no-index” in the rendered HTML?
27:28 Is it OK in terms of SEO to block everyone coming outside the US?
28:59 How do I know if I have crawl budget issues?
35:32 Does Googlebot follow button links?
37:33 Does Googlebot follow JavaScript links?
38:09 Are JavaScript links OK? Is it better to have normal HTTP redirects?
40:43 How should SEOs talk to developers?
43:31 Should I be worried if there is a blank page with JavaScript disabled on a site?
44:44 Will executing JavaScript with an SEO tool like Screaming Frog reflect how Googlebot actually sees the site?
48:11 Should an e-commerce website have all the product boxes, product links, pagination visible in the source code?
51:00 How does Next. js rehydration in React based site is seen by Google?
51:35 How many products will Google load with infinite scroll?
52:15 Is it OK to have different types of pagination in the source vs rendered HTML?
53:01 Is there a situation where you could justify linking internally using URLs with parameters and those URLs are canonicalized to the version without?
54:29 What would you say are like the, the worst JavaScript SEO mistakes you wish you stopped seeing and you keep seeing them over and over again?

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[SEOSLY]

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[pandraus]

really useful conversation! at the same time very technical but with broad examples.

[ryanmccain]

haha. these are questions that have been building on in your head for years. :)

[JitendraPratapSinghJPS]

Multiple time I noticed google indexed pages where used canonical tags