Do search engines read pop-up text?

[bilalseo]

Greetings,

Guys one quick question. I am going to use div holding some text inside and that will be operating through jquery. Okay! This div will be used within the html page, so that when it opens with popup; it will not leave the page. My question is that: is that way am i going to use it and if i use it how would it become SE friendly.

- div holding paragraphs inside will be opening with a popup that will not leave the page.
- div will be used within the html.
- div will be operating through jquery

tell me is that all above SE friendly method.. will google read all the the text within the popup or not.. and if then how? Besides, I have read many forums, blogs blaa blaa.. but no one surely say about it.. someone says yes google indexed it and read it.. someone says google read it but actively avoid reading things operates through jquery.. so what is the real hack, I STILL DON"T KNOW.. guys help me out..
Thanks,

bilal

[penders]

Take out your JavaScript and view the source of your page. If you can read the content that you want indexed then so can the search engines. (And likewise, from an accessibility point of view, your page should still be at least readable to those users who do not have JavaScript enabled.)

Search engines generally do not run JavaScript. So, if you have content that is generated entirely by JS, then the SE's are unlikely to see it.

[bilalseo]

Hey thanks for the reply. Appreciated. I will do as directed :) thankyou!

Bilal

[rocknbil]

If you do your pop ups like this, where newWin is the Javascript function,

<a href="my-supplemental-data.html" onclick="return newWin('my-supplemental-data.html');">Help</a>

Yes.

If you do them like this,

<a href="#" onclick="return newWin('my-supplemental-data.html');">Help</a>

or <ulp> this,

<a href="javascript:newWin('my-supplemental-data.html');">Help</a>

No.

[incrediBILL]

Search engines generally do not run JavaScript.

That rule doesn't apply with Google anymore, they process AJAX and a whole bunch more.

[bilalseo]

yes they do not run javascripts..agreed! but what if the popup control by a div through CSS..

[tangor]

what if the popup control by a div through CSS

That's html. It will be read.

[incrediBILL]

yes they do not run javascripts..agreed!

Um, I said they DO run javascript, at least Google appears to be. The other SEs I'm not so sure about.

CSS is just HTML, it will be read.

Javascript pop-ups less likely but not impossible.

[penders]

yes they do not run javascripts..agreed!

I was speaking generally. As incrediBILL suggests, it is true that Google can read some JavaScript these days. In fact I have recently seen a video of Matt Cutts where he says just that and advises developers to allow the googlebot to spider their JS and CSS files (ie. do not block in robots.txt).

TBH, in your case, it shouldn't matter whether the search engine is able to read JavaScript or not - if implemented correctly. If you are using JS, then you should be using JS to hide the unseen content in the first place.

[bilalseo]

thanks guys for valued comments and feedback.. appreciated.. :)now I'm much cleared by your thoughts and feeling comfort to go with div and javascript enabled popups..

Thanks,

Bilal Qayyum