#! (hashbang) and Google SEO [closed]

Question

I've read over the Google specification for crawling AJAX-enabled pages. Since part of Google's indexing method uses the URL itself, will converting to !# negatively effect SEO?

For instance, if I have a page at www.mysite.com/surfing, Google will be likely to rate it highly if a user searches for "surfing" because it has "surfing" in the URL. Would the same be true for www.mysite.com/#!surfing or does it ignore the hash fragments for the purposes of weighting the URL itself?

Starflower

That question was answered before google implemented it's ajax crawling standard – Starflower

Currently, since 2015, Google has deprecated its AJAX crawling scheme. See this page for a complete overview of the new standards – Stelliform

I voted to close this question because it is not a programming question and it is off-topic on Stack Overflow. Non-programming questions about your website should be asked on Webmasters. In the future, please ask questions like this there. – Snowbound

Related questions that have been asked on Webmasters: Does Google index #! (hash bang) URLs? and Do other search engines support Google's "hash bang" syntax for crawling AJAX applications? and Status of Crawlable Ajax? – Snowbound

Answer 1

Perhaps you have already read in the google Ajax-crawling instructions that the !# is actually transformed into ?_escaped_fragment_ by the google crawler. So let's use your example: www.mysite.com/#!surfing , the google crawler will see the link as www.mysite.com/?_escaped_fragment_=surfing . So it comes to the question : what is better for google SEO a link with a paremeter ?_escaped_fragment_=surfing or without one /surfing ? Search engineer representatives have confirmed on numerous occasions that URLs with more than 2 dynamic parameters may not be spidered unless they are perceived as significantly important (i.e. have many, many links pointing to them). So unless you're using too many parameters in the url, you don't have much to worry about. If you haven't done it already, you can always read the detailed google documentation https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started . Now, just an advice - don't rely on # in your AJAX website. Use history.pushState() to change your url to whatever you wish. I use #! only on browsers that don't support history.pushState() like IE. The problem with the SEO with #! doesn't come form the url but from the difficulties in the Server Side processing of the information needed to provide HTML snapshot for the crawler.

Chevrette

Answer 2

The question is old. Now Google not supports AJAX-Crawling anymore: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2015/10/deprecating-our-ajax-crawling-scheme.html

And this document officially deprecated:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started

So don't use hashbangs in URLs.

Articulate

Answer 3

Traditionally, from SEO perspective, hash tag (#) is used to avoid the following issues

-Cannibalization issues

-Affiliate URLs (Here is a good article about how to use hash for tracking purpose instead of using question mark in the URL)

-Show limited content on the page (pagination issues)

The usage you are refering to is what Google recommends on how to make AJAX pages being able to be read by Google - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/174992?hl=en

For more info about hash tag and its SEO benefits, check this blog post - https://digitalreadymarketing.com/adding-hash-in-urls-seo-benefits/

Welty

Answer 4

In My personal opinion and 8 years in SEO & development It won't harm but it depends more on the site other parameters so adding the !# won't do harm...

Do you have the site URL so I can take a more in-depth Look ?

Aria

Answer 5

That could cause a problem if Google's crawler thought that there could be an infinite number of possibilities. Like with a ? in the url. But the answer beyond that is clear.

website.com/oreo-cookies

is more semantic and easier to understand for both people and crawlers than

website.com/#!oreo-cookies

But is this going to have a major impact? If you were a client paying me for SEO, I would tell you that your incoming text links with relevant keyword phrases from relevant related websites is far more important. I would also say that if you are submitting an xml sitemap for google to digest, and lots of popular websites are using the #! google will figure it out and ignore it.

So bottom line, if my content was worth linking to, and I made sure google was finding all my pages and indexing them, I would not worry about it.

Vicechairman

Answer 6

I think that it will not harm your SEO in any way I am in SEO for last 5 years and haven't experienced such problem yet so don't worry about it. So my opinion is you can do it by adding the !# no harm !!

Ostrogoth