document.write() links

Will Google follow html links written with document.write()?

[minichate]

Hello all,
I've been asked to write a javascript that will update across various sites. Something that can be included like:

<script src="http://www.example.com/update.js type="text/javascript"></script>

My question is, if there is something like:

document.write('<a href="http://www.example.com">Example</a>');

in the code, will it be followed?

[tedster]

Once in a while the url may be followed, but such links are not followed routinely -- and they do not pass PR or link text influence.

[londrum]

i read somewhere that links inside javascript will only be looked at if you include the full URL
..with the http:// at the beginning

[SEOtop10]

If possible, you might consider using PHP. Of course, it depends on whether you can develop the URL before the page has rendered.

PHP generated URLs will be followed and will pass PR and link text benefits.

[minichate]

If possible, you might consider using PHP

Not an option in this case. It's so that random people on the internet can include content on their site without them needing to resort to perl/PHP/whatever.

[londrum]

are you saying that you need to write a snippet of code that other people can place on their own sites?

if that's the case, i wouldn't use document.write - because it's not forward compatable.
it doesn't matter too much now, as people are still serving XHTML pages as text/html, but document.write won't work on XHTML pages served as application/xhtml+xml

[kaled]

It has been said that Googlebot may follow any url it finds that begins http: however, Googlebot does not routinely read external javascript. In addition, as has been said, no PR is likely to be passed.

Kaled.

[fishfinger]

Google Analytics counts document.write urls as links, but I have tested to see if they are not crawled and they are not.