This is Onely's Bartosz Goralewicz's deck "Google vs. JavaScript - What's the Score in 2019?" as presented at Web Zürich on August 23, 2019.

1. Google vs.
JavaScript
What’s the Score in 2019?
Bartosz Góralewicz, CEO of Onely
bart_goralewicz
www.onely.com

2. JavaScript & SEO

3. 50 Shades of JavaScript

4. Google and JavaScript – a difficult
relationship

5. JavaScript
madness

6. …however
JavaScript SEO
is still massively
misunderstood
in 2019

12. Der Desktop ist tot.
google.de
amazon.de
zalando.de
23%
26%
25%

13. Der Desktop ist tot.*
google.ch
amazon.ch
zalando.ch
39%
xx%
45%*Not in Switzerland

14. LET’S GO BACK TO 2015/2016

15. HULU.com decides to try a new
JavaScript framework

16. Can this backfire?

18. THE PROBLEM

19. What EXACTLY went wrong?

21. Kamil
Grymuza

22. http://jsseo.expert

28. V2 Inline
GSC
fetch
URL
Indexed?
Content
cached
Links
Content
Indexed?
Test
URL
Inline Inline

29. GSC
fetch
URL
Indexed?
Content
Cached
Links
cached
Content
Indexed?
Test
URL
Inline External

30. GSC
fetch
URL
Indexed?
Content
Cached
Links
cached
Content
Indexed?
Test
URL
Inline External

31. GSC
fetch
URL
Indexed?
Content
Cached
Links
cached
Content
Indexed?
Test
URL
Version 2 Version 2 BundledVersion 1

32. If you search for any competitive
keyword terms, it’s always going to
be server rendered sites. And the
reason is because although Google
does index client-side rendered
HTML, it’s not perfect yet and
other search engines don’t do it as
well. So if you care about SEO,
you still need to have server-
rendered content.
Jeff Whelpley
Angular U conference, June 22-25, 2015, Hyatt Regency, San Francisco Airport
“Angular 2 Server Rendering”
ele.ph/angularU

33. Google vs. other search engines (2017
data)

34. … but this still wasn’t the main problem with
search engines and JavaScript.

35. We couldn’t find a JavaScript website that… ranks.

36. Tell me
why I
can’t…
Clear your
mind of
questions
*not the actual conversation

37. HTML
JS

38. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus
malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique
senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing
elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna.
Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin
pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed
pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus.
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor
sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet
commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et
malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor
congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet
enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy
pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies,
purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi
tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer
adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros
quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis
egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce
posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est.
Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus
malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique
senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing
elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna.
Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin
pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed
pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus.
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor
sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet
commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et
malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor
congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet
JavaScript vs. crawler budget
Some JavaScript frameworks are
indexable,
but there is a fine print…

39. JavaScript

40. BUT
…
HTML

42. Do you already know where I am going with this?

43. Kamil
Grymuza

44. Crawler budget experiment 2017

45. We repeated this experiment many times
and the results were always the same.

46. JavaScript,
even when indexable,
can kill your crawler budget…

47. JavaScript vs. Crawler budget (crawl
demand)
Oh no!
(…) Also, crawling
& indexing is
currently a bit
slower than static
HTML (...)ele.ph/crawldem

48. Thanks,
John!
You’re the
best,
Bartosz!*
*he didn’t say that
John’s advice helped

49. I reached out to Ilya Grigorik..

50. JS is less
effective than
HTML
JavaScript is
not bad for
SEO, if done
right*
*he said exactly that
Ilya Grigorik

51. JavaScript HTML

52. Enter JavaScript
1 100

53. Fast forward to 2018

56. 2 waves
HTML JAVASCRIPT
• JS dependent
content only
• HTML content
• Canonicals
• Meta data
• HTTP Codes

58. Fast forward ~1 year

59. Problem fixed*
*on the desktop version

60. Problem fixed*
*on the desktop version
**mobile first indexing is live

61. Mobile Googlebot Chrome Screenshot

62. Mobile Googlebot Chrome Screensho

63. Mobile Googlebot Chrome Screensho

64. Mobile Googlebot Chrome Screensho

65. 2019

67. Crawler budget experiment 2019

68. National Geographic

69. NationalGeographic.com – no JS

70. NationalGeographic.com – no JS
100% of JS content indexed

71. Asos.com

72. Asos.com – no JS
100% of JS content indexed

73. Important things that DON’T work (yet?)*
*I’m sorry, Martin :)

74. medium.com – 58%
vice.com – 74%
shop.lululemon.com – 92%
cosmopolitan.in – 49%
Percentage of the JavaScript content indexed
(random samples)

75. 2 waves of JavaScript indexing

76. % of the JS content NOT indexed after 10
days
50%
100%
7%
14%

77. Let’s talk black hat*
*again – I’m super sorry,
Martin.

78. Cloaking in 2019

79. NoMoreGunsUSA.com case study

83. A new game, new
rules,
and new players.

84. 9/16/2019 Confidential – Oracle Internal/Restricted/Highly RestrictedCopyright © 2019, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. |
What’s at stake?
Hulu vs. Netflix

87. Step 1.
V.2
Choosing the right framework

88. Step 2. Rendering
JavaScript
Prerendering
Server Side Rendering
Universal/Isomorphic
Static site generators (Gatsby.js)

90. Step 3.
Enjoy your traffic!

91. Experiment & measure

92. @bart_Goralewicz
www.onely.co
m
bartosz@onely.c
om