AJAX is still pretty popular for websites, and at Google Dance Tokyo, Gary Illyes and the other Googlers were asked about whether AJAX content was valued less by Google when compared to straight static HTML content, or if Googlebot still has trouble with AJAX – something that many webmaster dealt with years ago.

But does Googlebot have a bias of static HTML over AJAX, even though Google can generally crawl it well now?

Here is Google’s response:

As far as Googlebot can see content, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Ajax or static. Googlebot can render almost all pages now. It was not the case in past days. We try to render and evaluate what users really see in their browser. So, in general we evaluate ajax content and static content equally.

So as long as Googlebot can render it properly, it should be fine for SEO purposes.  And SEOs can use the Fetch and Render tool in Google Search Console to ensure that Googlebot is seeing what it should be seeing.

They also added some additional advice and caveats for SEOs using AJAX, although it is relevant advice for all SEOs.

* Do not block JavaScript by robots.txt.
* Make sure Googlebot can render the page properly by using Fetch and Render as Google in Search Console.
* Googlebot can’t render dynamic content driven by user interaction such as click and mouseover.
* You need to assign a unique URL to each content. For example, Googlebot can’t see all the content on infinite scroll with the same URL because it doesn’t scroll.

So bottom line, if you are using AJAX, or any other kind of coding that Googlebot could potentially have issues with, as long as it renders properly in Search Console, Google doesn’t treat that content any differently than if it was static HTML or any other type of coding or script.

Thank you to Kenichi Suzuki, a Google Top Contributor in Japan and popular SEO blogger, for translating the Google Dance Q&A for The SEM Post.  We will have his full Google Q&A report tomorrow.