Does a modal javascript popup (like fancybox) affect seo crawlers

Question

We are testing a modal z-layer style popup (fancybox javascript implementation) on one of our content pages that blocks user interaction with the rest of the page without a signup. I am curious what factors this has on crawlers (googlebot). We are aware the modal popup has other behavioral impacts on ranking (e.g. bounce rate, etc). I am curious if the presence of modal javascript/html code adversely affects search ranking.

Loewe

Answer 1

The other answers saying that crawler bots are not executing Javascript are wrong or out-of-date. Experiments have proven that the Google bots (2017) does follow links that are rendered using javascript, therfor they crawl somehow the websites with js enabled.

The following article is from 2015 and proves what I've said.

http://searchengineland.com/tested-googlebot-crawls-javascript-heres-learned-220157

Kindling

Answer 2

Generally speaking search engine crawlers don't process most JavaScript so those modals popups are ignored and do not affect crawlers.

Speechless

Answer 3

1. Turn JavaScript off in your browser
2. Open your website
3. This is how Google sees it

That being said, I guess the popup has no effect on Google as it is rendered purely using JavaScript.

Latency