Did you know that Google’s robot crawler can pretty much only read text? It doesn’t see your pretty images, or flash, or javascript. It only sees text. Google has just added a new feature to Webmaster Tools that shows you exactly what GoogleBot sees. To use Webmaster Tools you will need to sign up, and verify you own your website.
Published on October 18, 2009
Did you know that Google’s robot crawler can pretty much only read text?
It doesn’t see your pretty images, or flash, or javascript.
It only sees text.
Google has just added a new feature to Webmaster Tools that shows you exactly what GoogleBot sees.
To use Webmaster Tools you will need to sign up, and verify you own your website.
Then you can find it under the “Labs” tab, click on “Fetch as Googlebot”.
What will you see?
- You’ll see the html source of your webpage (which you can do using your browser by clicking on “View Source”)
- Response code (Eg 200 which means everything is fine, or 301 which means “temporary redirect”)
- What type of server your website is on (Eg Apache or IIS/Windows)
- Any scripts or CSS files which are called and included
Boring?
Yeah it is actually.
How you can use that to improve your Search Engine Optimisation
The point I want to make is that Google gobbles up text for breakfast.
- So if your main navigation is javascript, Googlebot probably can’t read it
- If you have text in your images, Googlebot can’t read it
- If you have keywords in your meta title, meta description, headings and content, you’re on to a winner.
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