John Mueller

With the migration to #Mastodon 4, your public profile pages & posts are now #JavaScript pages.

In terms of #SEO (I know, not everyone cares about being found in Google), this will likely mean that it'll take a bit longer for your posts to be findable, since they're linked from your profile page, and that page has to be rendered in order to see the links. Slower servers might have more trouble: indexing might time out before it sees the content. (more)

Nov 15, 2022 at 9:32amWeb
Show threadJohn MuellerNov 15, 2022
(trying this unlisted for the rest of the thread) If you want to test your pages, you can use Google's Mobile Friendly test: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly . It will try to show the page with a smartphone #Googlebot rendering it. Google uses smartphone rendering for almost all indexing now, so it's a good match. It's not perfect though (timeouts are shorter than for search).
Mobile-Friendly Test - Google Search Console

Show threadJohn MuellerNov 15, 2022
.. and if you run a server yourself, you can find out much more in Search Console. You can see reports for how things are being found & indexed, and can test pages specifically for indexability ( https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9012289?hl=en ). To get there, you need to verify ownership of your server first though. It's good to get this done early, you never know when you'll need it (you can do urgent URL removals there).
URL Inspection Tool - Search Console Help

About the URL Inspection report and test The URL Inspection tool provides information about Google's indexed version of a specific page, and also allows you to test whether a URL might be indexable.

Show threadJohn MuellerNov 15, 2022

And if you're curious about #JavaScript pages and #Google Search, we have a ton of material on what to watch out for and how to test. @geekonaut has put a ton of work into this, and is our #JavaScriptHero.

Start here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/javascript-seo-basics

Or videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKoqnv2vTMUPOalM1zuWDP9OQl851WMM9

#JavaScript is not a blocker for #SEO, but it's good to understand how it plays a role.

Understand JavaScript SEO Basics | Google Search Central  |  Documentation  |  Google for Developers

Discover how Google Search processes JavaScript and explore best practices for improving JavaScript web apps for Google Search.

Google for Developers
Show threadJohn MuellerNov 15, 2022
... and random anecdote: Twitter's pages also used to be JavaScript based -- they moved to the "AJAX crawling scheme" (#! URLs / ?_escaped_fragment_= as URL parameters) at some point, which helped. Nowadays I think they have "traditional" HTML pages for search (but use a m-dot subdomain, which makes mobile indexing trickier).
Show threadCopy Meets ContentNov 15, 2022
@johnmu @geekonaut you made my day! I had no idea JavaScript SEO existed...watched a couple of videos already, they're awesome! Thank you!
Show threadBrodie ClarkNov 15, 2022
@johnmu thanks for sharing John, great thread. Would love to see Mastodon put more emphasis on SEO - I wonder where that sits on @Gargron’s priority list
Show threadJohn MuellerNov 15, 2022

@brodieclark @Gargron From various threads I've seen over my long time here (a week? lol), I think it's not considered a priority other than to make sure it doesn't attract spam (nofollows everywhere).

IMO that's a fine decision, and the cool part is that *you* can publish your posts on your own site with minimal effort, since the infrastructure is so open. RSS feed is enough.

Also, individual servers could do things differently if they want to.

Show threadBrodie ClarkNov 15, 2022
@johnmu @Gargron that makes a lot of sense, appreciate the insight!
Show threaddre Nov 15, 2022
@johnmu Very nice insight. Imagine if one day #Mastodon will beat #Twitter in ranking. I think it will happen.