Does Facebook crawler currently interpret javascript before parsing the DOM?

Question

But I wanted to know if it is still the case at current date... (The documentation on facebook dev site doesn't give any precision about this point)

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 21 '14 at 07:54

4

In the tests I've run I've never seen it interpret the JS, but that might be contextual / domain-specific (who knows).

To test your specific case, use the Facebook linter: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug

(log into FB first)

That's the only way to be sure 100% sure how FB will parse your page (what properties it will infer)

answered Aug 21 '14 at 07:54

Malcolm Diggs

3

Finally I tested on my own and can confirm that it doesn't interpret javascript code that set metadata "og:title" (on August 22, 2014) – jeromerg Aug 22 '14 at 18:59
As of end of March 2015, still does not. But Google does! Still need some more experiment on whether Google follow link made up by js – Phung D. An Mar 26 '15 at 07:20
Can you share the code you have? Javascript does not seem to work for me. I have a theory you might not be using Open Graph, though. Maybe the Facebot accepts some JS but not the Open Graph scraper part does not? – Noah Jul 03 '15 at 00:23
seems to me that fb crawler will run `window.location = [some link]` but no dynamic javascript if you try to set og metadata. anyone have a confirmation? fb crawler keeps redirecting when i do `window.location` @Noah – Kyle Calica-St Dec 02 '16 at 22:30
2

It is now 2017. Is the situation still the same? – Juha Syrjälä Feb 01 '17 at 05:14
1

@juha-syrjälä Exactly! Still the same, sadly. – Deepak Thomas Aug 26 '17 at 19:09
2019 still same problem – Gowtham Sooryaraj Feb 04 '19 at 13:57
anybody had solution for that? – Gowtham Sooryaraj Feb 04 '19 at 13:57

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 21 '14 at 07:54

3

Yes, that is still the case (and I wouldn’t expect it to change anytime soon).

The Open Graph meta information must be provided by the server, so that it can be read from the HTML code when the URL is fetched.

answered Aug 21 '14 at 07:54

CBroe

2 Answers2