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Yes, but in the case of SAAS apps, what exactly are they crawling (if allowed) ? In our case, it would be a bunch of edit controls, grids, buttons, containers,

Yes, but in the case of SAAS apps, what exactly are they crawling (if allowed) ? In our case, it would be a bunch of edit controls, grids, buttons, containers, etc. that don't really make a whole lot of sense in the context of a search engine. I think it's important to start recognizing that there's two distinct types of web "applications" starting to emerge: the more traditional kind of "application" that is actually more like a web site, and the newer kind of application that is more like an actual application (desktop/mobile). Edit: Just read the new guidelines, and they are now considering serving up different content for the crawler as being "against the rules". So that probably cements the idea that you shouldn't allow Google to crawl anything that's mostly content-free and just an "app".

onion2k 11y ago
"Don't let Google crawl your site if it's not appropriate" is great advice, that's true, but it has nothing to do with whether you're serving up JS or HTML.
- TimJYoung 11y ago
  Yeah, I'm conflating the two, based upon my personal experiences. But, are people really writing applications that generate all content completely on the client side via JS, but want the end result to be more like a traditional web site ? That seems weird, even to me. :-)
  - bphogan 11y ago
    Tons of news sites are doing exactly this. I can't tell you how many times I follow a link from Facebook or other social media, only to be brought to a page where a spinning gif spins for several seconds while JS loads the article.
M2Ys4U 11y ago
> Just read the new guidelines, and they are now considering serving up different content for the crawler as being "against the rules". That is called "cloaking", and Google has said this for a very, very long time. At least 10 years.
- madeofpalk 11y ago
  They had an exception for it for sending Googlebot to a 'static' copy of your site for rendering SPA.

onion2k 11y ago

"Don't let Google crawl your site if it's not appropriate" is great advice, that's true, but it has nothing to do with whether you're serving up JS or HTML.

TimJYoung 11y ago
Yeah, I'm conflating the two, based upon my personal experiences. But, are people really writing applications that generate all content completely on the client side via JS, but want the end result to be more like a traditional web site ? That seems weird, even to me. :-)
- bphogan 11y ago
  Tons of news sites are doing exactly this. I can't tell you how many times I follow a link from Facebook or other social media, only to be brought to a page where a spinning gif spins for several seconds while JS loads the article.

M2Ys4U 11y ago

> Just read the new guidelines, and they are now considering serving up different content for the crawler as being "against the rules". That is called "cloaking", and Google has said this for a very, very long time. At least 10 years.

madeofpalk 11y ago
They had an exception for it for sending Googlebot to a 'static' copy of your site for rendering SPA.