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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Optimizing AJAX for Rankings

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:13 PM

In New York recently I was upset to have missed a seminar on optimizing AJAX websites for rankings. Fortunately Liz Camps of the Big Green Blog took some fantastic notes and summarized the seminar. I highly recommend the read for those who anticipate they will be implementing AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript & XML). I know, it sounds awfully fancy but I expect to see a dramatic increase in use of AJAX by StepForth's clients over the next 2 years.

Here is an excerpt from Liz's synopsis:
"If you're planning to use AJAX on your site, or if your web site already contains AJAX, you'll need to take some extra steps to protect your natural rankings in major search engines. As long as you follow a few guidelines, you can make AJAX work without any impact on your SEO. But if you don't follow these guidelines, your search rank can suffer."

As it turns out the search engine un-friendliness of AJAX mirrors many of the disadvantages of FLASH. As a result, the solution to search engine friendly design with AJAX is not to use it as the basis for the entire website but to (much like FLASH) integrate it within spiderable content such as text content and links or other JavaScript-free content.

I highly doubt FLASH and AJAX will always pose such a barrier to search engines but for now and the near future you will need to utilize this technology carefully to allow search engines to access content on your site.

Labels: AJAX, Conferences, Ross Dunn

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:13 PM.

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Wednesday, December 20, 2006

An End to Google Search API

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 12:00 PM

Earlier in December Google cut off access to its SOAP API for new customers. This move has concerned many developers and webmasters.

The Google Search API was still in beta and designed to allow developers to create programs to perform a Google search using SOAP. (Simple Object, Access, Protocol).
At code.google.com the site notes:

"As of December 5, 2006, we are no longer issuing new API keys for the SOAP Search API. Developers with existing SOAP Search API keys will not be affected."

Google appears to be pushing the switch over to the AJAX Search API instead and directs users to the AJAX page.

The AJAX Search API is better suited to make it easier for webmasters and developers to incorporate a dynamic search box which includes Video, News, Maps and Blog searches and also to use when building web apps on top of Google search.

While this change will not affect the average internet user, it will have an impact on some webmasters and developers. Google says the existing SOAP API’s will not be affected, but making the switch may be in your best interest, as SOAP may be completely phased out over time.

Labels: AJAX, API, Google, SOAP