Google Cache

Returning 404

[herb]

On one of our sites we are using a JS floating menu. When clicked on from the Google cache they return 404 errors. No easy way out of it, the whole site is designed around the menu floating. Any one know or have any thoughts on using the following. Will this PO the folks at Google.

<script language="javascript">
<!-- hide
if (location.href.indexOf("cache") != -1)
{
window.location.href="http://www.pagelocation.com";
}
// end hide --></script>

Orig. posted in Google forum, but it got lost in a heated debate on another subject.

[tedster]

Would you share a bit more detail on why the floating menus misfire when displayed from the Google cache? Are you convinced there's no fix to that code?

FWIW, I've seen pages in the cache with similar javascript to what you propose. I haven't tracked their success over time, so I can't say for sure how Google has viewed this.

To me the situation seems straightforward. Google SHOULD prefer a fix over serving up a dysfunctional page. But, these are my thoughts, not Google's. And you don't want to lose that traffic, even short term.

Perhaps the safer route would be to use the googlebot meta tag and keep your pages out of the cache altogether. That way there's no chance of tripping any automatic alarms with a re-direct. After all, the end result of your proposed code is to take the page out of their cache anyway.

And if the meta tag earns you a hand reveiew, you're innocent of wrong doing so there should be no problem.

[IanKelley]

I'm curious... why would you base any site on Javascript?

Since you can't really be sure how Javascript is going to render for everyone (or even that they have it enabled at all) wouldn't it make sense to use it only for parts of a page that you can afford to lose?

[WebGuerrilla]

>>No easy way out of it

<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">

[bobriggs]

herb I've got one too, but no problems. So my first thought is: relative or absolute urls in the script?

If they're relative, of course, they're making requests on google's site, while in the cache.

[joshie76]

Our site has the exact same problem with our JS dropdowns. To fix all the links on a page in cache Google uses the BASE tag. This, for some reason I haven't investigated, doesn't seem to affect the BASE URL for the JS links in the dropdown. However - it hasn't caused us a problem as we're doing pretty well with Google (though maybe we'd do even better without it).