Ajax blocking google translate and page printing

[justhomdotcom]

Can anyone shed any light on this (i've emailed our developers but they said speak to google)

We use ajax to filter products based on selection via drop down boxes for example
HOM mens designer underwear

filter by brand, style size etc.

Problem is it appears that using ajax (so to avoid whole page refreshing after filter) that google translate won't work with a page that uses this ajax

Also try printing a page that uses the ajax filter and only 1st 6 products will only print from the page.

Can anyone more knowelgable give any advice as i'd like to get some 2nd opinions

[moredial]

I can't help you on the printing, although the answer may be the same.

Ajax, like all javascript, is invisible to search engines. Whatever content the js is generating just does not exist other than in the browser DOM and as the SE is only a content harvesting script it does not have a DOM.

If you want to hide content from SEs and anything else that relies on 100% compliance with accessibility requirements, then ajax is an excellent tool.

If you want the page accessible, you are left with server side scripts and dynamic URLs to reflect the changing content.

Your SEO will be able to help you to work out which version of the page needs the 'noindex' to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Another option is to use 'slidy' (which is css plus js from w3.org to create a web accessible alternative to ppt format) or css to hide/display the content and have a separate print css which makes all the content visible for printing.

P.S. my trusty testing browser settings only shows me Loading... and clicking on the options does not give me any more either.

[justhomdotcom]

So based on what you've seen would you think it would be better to ditch the ajax filter and just go for a standard filter

Pluses = Google translate and print would work
Con's = minor inconvenience and page load time for customer when flicking through filters

[axod]

Originally Posted by justhomdotcom So based on what you've seen would you think it would be better to ditch the ajax filter and just go for a standard filter Pluses = Google translate and print would work Con's = minor inconvenience and page load time for customer when flicking through filters

Ideal would be to keep it for User agents that support javascript, and have an alternative NOSCRIPT version for other browsers, google translate, crawlers etc I'd say,
For print I'm not 100% sure though - does it not print the ajax generated content? Should do...

[moredial]

The NOSCRIPT leaves you with the slow page load problem if you try to get everything into one page.

The 'solution' is to have your ajax pages in a section of the site with javascript used for links to hide it from the SEs and then use the NOSCRIPT tag for links to a separate site built for the search engines. Again use js links to send visitors back to the ajax site and NOSCRIPT links for everyone else. The print option would link to the NOSCRIPT part of the site.

Translation: still a problem unless you can think of a way to get the NOSCRIPT URL into the translate button.

[justhomdotcom]

Wouldn't that be classed as cloaking though which is the big no no in SEO?

For the page load I could just use pagination for the no script section (we do have the option for pagination plus show all link at the moment but i've found our customer prefer just to load all on one page and then scan through what we have)

[moredial]

Originally Posted by justhomdotcom Wouldn't that be classed as cloaking though which is the big no no in SEO? For the page load I could just use pagination for the no script section (we do have the option for pagination plus show all link at the moment but i've found our customer prefer just to load all on one page and then scan through what we have)

NOSCRIPT tag is to give alternate content to those users who are not able to access the javascript content. The tag is often used for many purposes, but this is what the tag is designed to do. All content generated by scripts should be repeated in the noscript tags.

If you are worried that Google will find the ajax pages, even though links to these pages are hidden in javascript, you can add the noindex to the meta tags. You don't want to disallow the ajax pages in the robots.txt as that would hide many of the internal links that you want the SEs to find.

There are lots of ways to do this. I think your content is too great to use the simple css pseudo hover on elements to switch between hidden and display or change of relative position i.e. off screen / middle of screen.

You can also change the position / visibility of DIVs using javascript which is more or less what slidy does.

Have a look at slidy - you may need to use an iframe to have this look good within your overall layout. Although slidy is better for showing the next page in a sequence, if I recall it can be used to navigate between the slides as well. As all the slides are within the same file, SEs will be able to index all the content and the content is available with and without javascript enabled.