ajax and search engines

[pohopo]

I am starting a site where I was planning to integrate ajax into it and then realized that search engines like google might not properly read the site as the page never reloads. I wonder how search engines plan to deal with this if at all...

[madwormer2]

Simply put, they don't cope with it. You would need to provide static versions of your pages if you want them to be indexed.

I think an entire site in AJAX isn't exactly what people are going to be expecting, especially if it's a content oriented site, rather than a service oriented one.

[vaaaska]

Two words: permalink, sitemap.

This is how I deal with Ajax. I see the stats...Google loves it.

[goldbug]

Two more words: progressive enhancement.

[pohopo]

so pretty much build the site to work without ajax which is what i 'should' do since some people might also have older browsers.

[goldbug]

Yep. For example, a site I'm working on currently has a fair bit of ajaxy-style stuff going on, but I originally designed it to function fully without any "extra layers" like CSS or JS. The JS/Ajax crud is loaded and hooks itself into the page/markup, and only for browsers with JS enabled and capable, so older browsers or nonstandard browsers can still play along, albeit with a slightly less "cool" interface.