Is content inside a <noscript> tag indexed by search indexes?

Question

Is content inside a <noscript> (HTML4, HTML5) tag indexed by search engines?

(Inspired by this question)

Answer 1

It's indexed by Google. Try searching for

site:www.flickr.com "to take full advantage of flickr, you should use a javascript-enabled browser"

Google also adds "About 58,400,000 results (0.22 seconds)".

Answer 2

I did a little research and it sounds like there is a lot to the <noscript> tag. Here is what I found:

1. Google does look at the data inside of the <noscript> tag
2. Spammers and black hats have abused the <noscript> tag before. So even when Google uses the <noscript> tag to determine search results it isn't one of the stronger rules.
3. Google seems to be currently index the text inside of the <noscript> tag for results but it appears to turn that on and off, see here, http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3122771.htm
4. Google will follow links inside of the <noscript> tag but it will not send PR to the pages linked from within the <noscript> tag

Also, according to this document, http://searchengineland.com/google-io-new-advances-in-the-searchability-of-javascript-and-flash-but-is-it-enough-19881, Google prefers the text within the noscript to match the test within your JavaScript. The goal of using <noscript> to provide graceful degradation. This article also makes it sound like Google can now index JavaScript fairly well which means abusing the <noscript> tag is a bad idea but that there is nothing wrong with using it.