An SEO professional asked John Mueller about their site, which is not a very user-friendly site.
They explained that when JavaScript is turned off, most of the images are not loaded, the flyout menu cannot be opened.
However, the Chrome inspect feature in their all-menu links are there in the source code.
Is it possible that their dependence on JavaScript is a problem for Googlebot?
John answered that, from his perspective, just like with the question they had on web components earlier, he would test it.
Probably, everything will be okay most likely. And, John would assume, if you’re using JavaScript reasonably, if you’re not doing anything special to block the JavaScript on your pages, then likely it will just work.
But, you are much better off not just believing him, but rather using a testing tool to try it out. And the testing tools that Google has available are quite well documented.
There are many variations on things that they recommend regarding improving things if you run into problems.
So John would double check their guides on JavaScript and SEO and think about perhaps making sure that they actually work in the particular way you want them to. Then, you can take that to improve your site overall.
Next, John circled back to where they mentioned user-friendliness regarding JavaScript.
From Google’s point of view, the guidance that they have is essentially very technical in that Google needs to make sure that Googlebot can see the content from a technical point of view, and that it can see the links on your pages from a technical perspective.
Google doesn’t primarily care about user friendliness. But, your users do care about user friendliness.
Therefore, perhaps it makes sense to do a bit more so that your users are really, for sure, having a good experience on your pages.
And this is often something that isn’t just a matter of using a simple testing tool.
Instead, it’s something where you have to do a small user study or interview users or at least do a survey on your site so you can understand where do your users get stuck?
What problems are they facing?
If you can improve the user-side of things, they are more likely to come back, to tell other people as well, and to invite others to use your website.
This happens at approximately the 10:23 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 10:23
All right, next question I have here is: our website is not very user friendly if JavaScript is turned off. Most of the images are not loaded, our flyout menu can’t be opened. However, the Chrome Inspect feature in their all-menu links are there in the source code. Might our dependence on JavaScript still be a problem for Googlebot?
John (Answer) 10:46
And from my point of view, like, like with the first question that we had on web components, I would test it. So probably everything will be okay. And probably, I would assume, if you’re using JavaScript in a reasonable way, if you’re not doing anything special to block the JavaScript on your pages, then probably it will just work. But you’re much better off not just believing me, but rather using a testing tool to try it out.
And the testing tools that we have available are quite well documented, there are lots of kind of variations on things that we recommend with regards to improving things if you run into problems. So I would double check our guides on JavaScript and SEO and think about maybe, I don’t know, trying things out making sure that they actually work the way that you want. And then taking that to improve your website overall. And you mentioned user friendly with regards to JavaScript.
So from our point of view, the guidance that we have is essentially very technical in the sense that, we need to make sure that Googlebot can see the content from a technical point of view, and that it can see the links on your pages from a technical point of view, it doesn’t primarily care about user friendliness. But of course, your users care about user friendliness. And that’s something where maybe it makes sense to do a little bit more so that your users are really, for sure having a good experience on your pages.
And this is often something that isn’t just a matter of a simple testing tool, but rather something where maybe you have to do small user study or kind of interview some users or at least do a survey on your website to understand where do they get stuck? What kind of problems are they facing? Is it because of these, I don’t know, you mentioned the flyout menus? Or is it something maybe completely different, where they’re seeing problems that maybe the text is too small, or they can’t click the buttons properly? Those kinds of things, which don’t really align with technical problems, but are more kind of user side things that, if you can improve those, and if you can make your users happier, they’ll stick around and they’ll come back and they’ll invite more people to visit your website as well.
