Hacker News Reader

It’s been received wisdom until now that Google penalizes websites which behave differently when scraped by the Googlebot. Is that no longer the case?

View on HN

Pinterest has proven by spamming SERP for years that if you're big enough Google will close eyes on it.

That applies to more than just google

If you are big enough, there are separate rules for you (or no rules)

They will serve same content to users with JS enabled and legit Googlebots while blocking clients w/o JS and bots. I don't think it violates Google rules but ofc is of questionable decency.

And Google can verify by crawling the site with and without JavaScript.

Also, google has a commercial relationship with them: https://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research/twi...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com