Okay, so you wanna know how your site looks to Google, eh? Or any search engine for that matter? This is how to do it…
If you haven’t already, go download the Web Developer Toolbar add-on for Firefox. Okay, now you should see a fancy new toolbar on your browser.
Okay, now do the following (and in this order)
1. Go to the “Images” menu, and from the drop down menu choose “Disable Images”, then “All Images”
2. Go to the “Disable” menu, choose “Disable Cache”, “Disable Javascript” (then “All Javascript”)
3. Go to “Cookies”, “Disable Cookies” (then “All Cookies”… seeing a pattern?)
4. Go to “CSS”, “Disable Styles”, “All Styles”
5. Lastly, go to “Options”, and “Persist Features” (This way, you can surf around like a googlebot).
Now you should see your page turn into raw text… not pretty, but accurate.
This is handy for figuring out what parts of your website is actually spiderable. There are some other functions as well, but play around with it yourself to see what you can do!
Also, as a side note, don’t forget to turn off the “Persist Features” if you want to have your regular internet back (you may have to turn the Javascript, Cookies, Images, etc. back on as well). If you know how to change your User Agent, you can really be Google…
Very informative! Thanks!