During the CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & SEO at SMX East yesterday, Bruce Johnson and Kathrin Probst from Google announced a new proposal for search engines to index AJAX.

Let me explain the proposal in a very simplistic way, that honestly over simples it, but does give non-technical people an idea on what this does.

AJAX is a form of advanced or rich JavaScript. Although Google does now look through JavaScript, AJAX often shows the same URL for multiple pages of content. When an AJAX form is displayed to a user, the URL stays the same but the content changes based on the form. Google proposed a plan to allow the search engine to see a new URL and the content behind that URL.

Here is the technical overview by Google:

For a more detailed look at how this works, see the blog post. Of course, servers and system admins would need to make this possible and web developers who have to code this in.

There are both support and pull back on this proposal. Let me quote you some of the comments from the various threads at Google Webmaster Help, WebmasterWorld and HighRankings Forum.

As you can imagine, there is the possibility of cloaking here. That means, I can show a user one thing on the first URL and the search engine another piece of content on their URL. Google would have to somehow validate all of this, some way.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help, WebmasterWorld and HighRankings Forum.