August 3, 2010 – Exhibit, like other Ajax applications, relies heavily on JavaScript to dynamically generate the displayed records. Unfortunately, such dynamic content is nearly always hidden from search engines, and therefore does not normally get indexed or included in services such as Google.
This limitation is a real concern in converting existing indexed content to Exhibit or making sure that new content is readily found by major search engines. Fortunately there are options to overcome this limitation, some provided directly by Exhibit itself. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has released a “wiki” to make Exhibit “search friendly”. Another option may be to use a simple table listing as a “table of contents” for a separate, indexed, static version. That is still a lot of work. Which makes one ask if new is always better?
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
