MerlinoxHow does Google interpret JS redirects?
👉🏻 It indexes the start page
👉🏻 It doesn't index the destination page
👉🏻 It sees redirect as a DOM update and uses the content of the destination page
🇺🇦 Optimisey 🇺🇦@merlinox Interesting.
I wonder if Googlebot would behave differently if the original/start page was not blank?
I still think Googlebot crawls a lot *without* javascript (like a 'forward scout bot') so if the page the scout found wasn't empty - would it behave differently? 🤔
Simon Cox 
@simoncox @optimisey sure! And I will be glad to read your results.
@simoncox your = @optimisey ;)
I'm building a test now anyway. :)
Ok - test set up - https://www.simoncox.com/seotests/jsredirect1/
@merlinox @optimisey
No slightly different so I can tell what gets indexed. Have put the first url in GSC.
No slightly different so I can tell what gets indexed. Have put the first url in GSC.
Page 1 indexed with content and is findable with "Javascripted redirected page" as a query.
Page 2 not crawled and indexed yet.
@merlinox @optimisey
More info...
Title of page 1 is: "Javascripting a redirect"
and description: "This is a javascripted redirecting page to see what happens when it is indexed."
The title of page 2 is: "Javascripted a redirect"
and description: "This is a javascripted and redirected page to see what happens when it is indexed."
And we can see the SERP is showing the 1st page URL, The title and description from the 2nd page - even though it is not indexed.
My conclusion so far is that if I come across this with any clients it might be good practice to change the redirect page's title and description to match the landing page.
@optimisey @merlinox
Not yet there is more testing to be done!
Kind of does make sense though if you think about what Google crawls, how and when.
@optimisey @simoncox as other still wrote, that behaviour is strictly similar to the 302 (before the unknown time Google treats it as a 301) ;)
@simoncox @optimisey like my test :)
@merlinox @optimisey exactly! Not seeing anything different to your test so far!
Alex@[email protected]
This behavior appeared not too long ago in google. In order to not index page 1 you must send the x-robots header with the value noindex, follow.
This behavior appeared not too long ago in google. In order to not index page 1 you must send the x-robots header with the value noindex, follow.