Google claims that they can now read and understand JavaScript better. James wanted to see if linking out to Amazon via a script would benefit rank.
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Will linking out to Amazon using a Javascript generated link help with rank? This is actually kind of timely because James did this test then Google actually released a video saying, “Hey, if you are linking using Javascript and you're not doing it right it is not going to be good.” In his test, he pretty much saw that result. It didn't do him any good. So, I'm just going to scroll down here and show you it dropped the page.
DORI: Actually, yes, that's a negative result.
CLINT: If you watch that video and you read the highlights basically this line right here inside of the Java that is messing things up or potentially messing ~ because if you put the links in here in this way Googlebot is looking for this a tag and a.href. It's not clear in the write up, does it have to be a.href alone, separated by itself and stuff?
So, I am anticipating that that may have been why he got the result that he did. He put a link on there and he got some extra stuff, maybe or maybe not messed with the keyword density a little bit because now you got Amazon stuff in there. Because he did another test where just regular normal linking to Amazon actually helped boost the rank ~. Then, when he implemented it this way it dropped it down.
DORI: Are we talking about – he put the link the page that got the link dropped down or the page that the link went to drop down
CLINT: Page that the link is on. It's the implementation of the link, right? So, the page that it’s linking on in normal method – the page in the normal method actually shot up. Then, when he implemented that same link using Javascript it went down. It could be keyword density or it could be that the bot did not recognize the a.href properly and that may have messed up the bot and thus it didn't get credit because the keyword density changed. This is pure speculation on my part of why the page drop down to the bottom.
At the end of the day, if you or your developers are going to do Javascript there's that new video out on linking with Javascript Google that you need to pay strict attention to and test to make sure that you're implementing your Javascript links properly.