Is using Progressive enhanment, over riding <a> tags with .js considered cloaking and can it be see by search engines

Question

Im using .load to load in content in from a page /about.html, so that search engines can see what is going on ive made the links that trigger the .load tags to the page /about.html but for usablility i have over riden these using e.preventDefault; as part of the .load script.

Is this considered bad / dangerous / black hat, and seeing as google bot cant see js will it see this ?

- bit of a side question but can google bot see the js code an analyse what it does ? or does it completly dis regard it, its function and its results ?

Answer 1

Progressive enhancement is not cloaking as long as it really is progressive enhancement. If the JavaScript is serving the same content but making the user experience better then that's fine and encouraged. It's only bad when you're serving different content to the search engines then you are to users for the sake of manipulating your rankings.

As for your second question, most JavaScript is not parsed by search engines but they do handle some JavaScript and Google does crawl ajax if you follow their standard,.

Answer 2

Try in Webmaster Tools > yourpage.com > Labs > Instant Previews

Page look same? -> NO PROBLEMO

In other case, it looks as cloaking -> try to fix it.