JavaScript and email addresses

Matt Cutts discusses the practice of using JavaScript to hide email addresses.

May 1, 2010 | Filed Under JavaScript Tutorials 

Comments

24 Responses to “JavaScript and email addresses”

  1. discusslife on October 26th, 2009 1:27 pm

    ya I was about to ask the same question!! lol

  2. shiftedstuff on October 26th, 2009 1:29 pm

    I remember reading about this in a slashdot discussion.

  3. ProuteurFou on October 26th, 2009 2:35 pm

    It’s a wig.

  4. darkyndy on October 26th, 2009 3:08 pm

    very useful info. Thanks. I was thinking that with JS I can obfuscate quick and easy e-mail addresses but not from now on :)

  5. nightgunner5 on October 26th, 2009 4:11 pm

    This video was probably made before then.

  6. andruha11234 on October 26th, 2009 4:19 pm

    they make about 30 vids in 1 day and then just upload 1 per day

  7. jasonUKbristol on October 26th, 2009 4:41 pm

    obfuscate. That’s a new word for me. I always use Javascript. At the moment it seems to work but thanks for the video. I think it’s great that good looks at these sort of things.

  8. evi0blackeagle on October 26th, 2009 8:03 pm

    what happened to his hair

  9. portalcab on October 26th, 2009 8:30 pm

    Hey, nice wig. Just kidding… =)

  10. almightyvegeta87 on October 27th, 2009 2:07 am

    Right

  11. takeallfree on October 27th, 2009 3:30 am

    This hair are not original

  12. wholesum on October 27th, 2009 5:20 pm

    JS robot’ed out won’t work matt… the spammers bots obviously will not respect robots.txt

  13. CodeSlapper on October 27th, 2009 6:35 pm

    The spammers hope you eschew obfuscation. Heh heh :)

  14. hoffmanj on October 27th, 2009 7:14 pm

    1. Matt means, if you robot out your JS, then Googlebot won’t execute it, and your email address won’t show up on search results/snippets.
    2. Presumably spammer bots are not as intelligent as Googlebot at executing JS to get the final text.

  15. PropellerBusted on October 28th, 2009 7:40 am

    LOL, he doesn’t even suggest how. THANKS MATT!

  16. RyanMeray on October 28th, 2009 11:42 pm

    Ugh, I love how there’s no good answer to this question. And I’m sorry, we have to assume that if Google can process the javascript, so can the spammers, since the illegal people are always a few steps ahead of everyone else (see: Malware authors.)

    So, Javascript is pointless, web forms can be hacked and used for even worse ends, what’s left?

    Ugh.

  17. hollowtube76 on October 29th, 2009 10:38 am

    i noticed this with my email address a few years back

  18. hpowers1 on October 29th, 2009 10:45 am

    uh, how many times did he say web forms and images?

  19. nuncaeslupus on October 29th, 2009 12:56 pm

    Well, I think if Google will become more intelligent as to execute Javascript, then it should be a little bit more intelligent as to detect that obfuscation intent and respect the webmaster decision. Yes, I know, that is more difficult, but… it’s Google!

  20. PropellerBusted on October 29th, 2009 1:56 pm

    Not enough, apparently! In my defense, I had this on in the background. Sowwy.

  21. 13hazza on November 17th, 2009 10:11 pm

    I just looked at the source (edit> source in web browser) of a site that I am making, this website has a form and my email address is not on the site. BUT if you look in the source, you can find where the form is going to be sent to. So, a form is not really an effective way of hiding it. If someone wants your email address, they will get it.

  22. worldlikes on November 23rd, 2009 10:36 am

    hi i am mad of you. you are a role model for online people.
    i have small dought that – is site map reflect the posistion of site .

  23. Vassilevsky on January 14th, 2010 5:54 pm

    I don’t care about spam because Gmail filters everything out anyway

  24. RandomAnimations27 on March 11th, 2010 5:42 pm

    How about having a CAPTCHA on your page, then, when the user types in the answer, show the email address. This will work because Google can’t fill in CAPTCHAs.

Powered by Yahoo! Answers