Does Google penalize <noscript>

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Does Google penalize <noscript>

whatcartridge

5:53 am on Jun 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

I saw on a story that <a famous brand name site> uses <h1> and hidden links between <noscript> tags on one of their sites. I had a looksee and it is pretty ugly. The <noscript> referenced wasn't even attached to a <script> section, it was just sitting on it's own on the page. Obviously this means Google sees a different page to the average surfer as the Googlebot doesn't read javascript.

Of course if the average user turns off Javascript in their browser they can see the <noscript> content as well, so is it really a different page being shown to the Googlebot and normal users? Is using <noscript> to insert extra <h1> and extra links into a page against the Google TOS?

Does anybody else here use the <noscript> for this type of thing?

[edited by: tedster at 6:26 am (utc) on June 23, 2006]

londrum

8:57 pm on Jun 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

i used that trick a few years ago on one of my sites. (when i was young, and didn't know any better) and they are still on there now! stuffed full of keywords. but i have never been dropped, and don't seem to have been penalised either.
it didn't do me any harm.

but it didn't do me any good either.
i think it's such an old trick that search engines just ignore it. probably weight the content as zero.

they will never ban you though, as the correct use of the <noscript> tag means that <h1> is allowed in there -- you are supposed to put the whole <body> section of the page inside the noscript bit. missing out the frames bit is naughty though.

jonathannelson

10:26 pm on Jun 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

whatcartridge -

my advice to you is...don't use them. back in the day i used to them on these "very well known sites" you are talking about (yes...that's me) but do not anymore. im not afraid to admit this either, many SEO's were doing the same type of thing during this time. the idea was to boost KDA (keyword density levels) for static pages w/o effecting the user experience on the page. this was incredibly useful for flash driven sites. however, i never embedded external/internal links within the <noscript> on these sites...that's a big no no.

Quadrille

8:20 am on Jun 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

I'd support that. I have to say I've zero personal experience of this, but I've noticed several reports of such things recently, and it seems to be all bad.

The 'safe' rule is to always use tags and attributes appropriately, or risk being 'labelled', and while <noscript> doesn't appear to produce a predictable effect, its predictable unpredictability seems to be predictably bad news. :)

soapystar

8:26 am on Jun 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

i am using this with google maps. I have pages with widget locations shown on a google map...the icons have links to the widget pages...if the noscript is tripped it becomes a former less glossy map with outbound links to the widget pages.

kaled

9:38 am on Jun 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

Insofar as <noscript> should be used for functionality rather than content, the only sensible action for a search engine to take is to ignore the contents of a <noscript> tag entirely.

That said, we all know that Google is not synonymous with sensible.

Kaled