Google Crawling the Wrong Javascript
June 25, 2009 by ian
I'm throwing this story out there to see if anyone else has had a similar experience.
Google's made a lot of noise recently about their newfound ability to crawl javascript and links that are built into a javascript.
Last week I saw a 500% increase in 'page not found' errors in one client's Google Webmaster Tools. The links all looked like this:
At first, I didn't make the connection between that and Google's improved javascript prowess.
After looking at the client's pages, though, the only place the guilty link appears is in a javascript:
In this context, the forward slash ('/') means 'www.investmentnews.com', so the text above gives you 'www.investmentnews.com/10020708'.
The only problem: That is not a link, Google!
It's just a javascript 'bug' for the client's analytics package, Hitbox. It tells Hitbox to record the pageview with a shorter URL. But it is not a link. No visiting browser would interpret it as one, either.
Anyone else seeing this kind of behavior?
Google folks, any chance of verifying and addressing this?
Thanks,
Your servant/slave/supplicant
Ian
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Snookerwolf says:
July 13, 2009 05:39
Any feedback on this. Want to make sure we don't have a client pop this question.