Javascript - is there a downside to SEO?

I am a newbie to this site so I hope this question is within the mandate of the forum. Is there a downside to Javascript in terms of SEO for images? I have a site that uses Javascript to present many of the images. The images under Javascript as I understand them are not indexed like the images in my Posts. Consequently these images are not seen in Google Search Images like my Post images. At least this is my current experience. While I accept there are flaws and omissions in my site SEO (things being corrected now) the core question is - does Javascript website design erode the index content as it relates to SEO? If so, is there a practice or implementation to be used to improve or address this shortcoming?

Thanks

Hi @matthew52 and welcome to the forum.

I am curious to know exactly how you test to see if the JavaScripted images are referenced in Google Searched Images.

Hi John

Well, good question. My understanding here comes from a colleague who has helped me build my site. In my conversations with him this I was told. I asked the question of him - why do you think my website images are not showing up in Google images? When I look at what images rank the only image of 200 that shows is the default image for the page. My post images appear and some images posted by other but a substantial part of my catalogue is missing. Bear with me here in that I am no master of this subject, just a business person trying to improve my SEO. So my question here is driven by a desire to understand whether there are solutions to the problem I am having. I am not saying that all my SEO is perfect but my business is quite niche and I have been around many years. I rank 11 in organic searching for my main keyword. And this is base on advice that I need to improve my SEO. Hope this is not too long winded. To answer your question - no test, just a sense that something is not working.

Thanks
Matthew

Try using Google Chrome Browser and enter the following in the command line:

site:mysite.com

// or maybe if there the URL has hyphens

site:"my-site.com"

// or your pages with showing "some text"

site:mysite.com "spme text" 

Google should display all the pages it has indexed and selecting images will show the relevant indexed images.

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Interesting. All of these images are not in the Javascript’ed area. So there is some confirmation of my analysis ??

Matthew

It certainly used to be the case that anything which required JavaScript to render was inaccessible to search bot, but that has been changing in recent years. This article is from a couple of years back, and might be helpful:

Also, this short video, recorded in 2013:

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