Google crawling dynamic content - study

[emp]

http://www.centrical.com/test/google-json-ld-and-javascript-crawling-and-indexing-test.html

Tl;dr
Yes, they do.

Some might not be found in the SERPs, though

::emp::

 

[turbin3]

I would say for at least a good 2 years, if not closer to 3, I've seen some dynamic pages or page elements (like from accordions, dynamic tabs, etc.) actually ranking for keywords I've optimized them for. This was mostly on relatively small, mid to low range authority sites (like DA 30-40 or less).

On a large authority site, what I can say is, they absolutely will crawl and even submit JS forms. I've noticed interesting behavior too, that so far I've been unable to pin down a specific behavior for. Basically, they'll see a form, choose some "relevant" (how they determine it, not sure) words from the page, and will submit the form with them. This actually gets really damn annoying, especially when it's a site with millions of pages, and the page(s) behind that form are all blocked, causing a lot of unnecessary crawl traffic on blocked pages.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Yeah, I've had jQuery accordians, AJAX tabs, and all other kinds of "dynamic" content indexed for at least 3-4 years. I didn't pay attention before that.

It's a good way to really boost up a homepage's on-page SEO without physically creating an incredibly long page. Works well for MFA style sites where you want the homepage ranking for a specific term without uglying it up.

 

[qwianghomingh]

Indeed, that's case. I didn't even know that. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/11/get-post-and-safely-surfacing-more-of.html

I would say for at least a good 2 years, if not closer to 3, I've seen some dynamic pages or page elements (like from accordions, dynamic tabs, etc.) actually ranking for keywords I've optimized them for. This was mostly on relatively small, mid to low range authority sites (like DA 30-40 or less).

On a large authority site, what I can say is, they absolutely will crawl and even submit JS forms. I've noticed interesting behavior too, that so far I've been unable to pin down a specific behavior for. Basically, they'll see a form, choose some "relevant" (how they determine it, not sure) words from the page, and will submit the form with them. This actually gets really damn annoying, especially when it's a site with millions of pages, and the page(s) behind that form are all blocked, causing a lot of unnecessary crawl traffic on blocked pages.

 

[builder]

I've noticed interesting behavior too, that so far I've been unable to pin down a specific behavior for. Basically, they'll see a form, choose some "relevant" (how they determine it, not sure) words from the page, and will submit the form with them.

Interesting. Are you sure it is Googlebot and not someone sending the requests with User Agent set as Googlebot?

 

[turbin3]

It is them indeed, based on IP's. The only thing I can figure is it's an attempt to find additional pages of the site in a manner that a user might try to, so instead of merely following links, they try to mimic that behavior. When the bot does this, it appears it submits the search with visible words and phrases on the page.