Using the Lynx Browser: How to see what Google sees

Wouldn’t it be nice to see your page just as Google sees it? Is that a pipe dream, you ask? Google is a massive network of computers running algorithms that no mere mortal could understand, and yet…

It is possible to see your site as Google sees it.

How does Google see your site?

First, we have to remember exactly what it is that a web page is. It’s a document, with images, videos or music, but more importantly, text. Every single website is a complex text document, and when it comes down to it, you could do away with all of the other things, but without text, you have nothing.

There is no magical, mysterious voodoo that Google is performing when they hit your site. (That comes later, when your site is PROCESSED.) When a Googlebot hits your page, do you know what it is scanning?

Text.

The content text, the text that says what the video is, the text that says what the images are, the text that tells you what links you have.

Text. And only text.

Enter the Lynx browser

If Google is only looking at text, it would do you well to do the same when you examine your site.

That’s why the Lynx browser is your friend, since that’s all it does.

No javascript, no images, no flash, no CSS, nothing but glorious text as far as your terminal will reach. Did I say terminal? Yes, yes I did.

Lynx is a text only, command line browser that closely matches what the Googlebot sees when it comes to visit your site. Is your site image heavy? You’d better hope your <alt> tags are present and well written, because that’s all you’re getting. That’s the main reason why alt tags are essential for SEO. Google can’t see the image itself, it sees only what you describe it as in the context of the image, the image name itself, and the alt text for the link.

You will also start to understand the purpose behind the <noscript>, <label>, and heading tags, because their use is far more important to a text only presentation than they are when you rely upon visuals to convey your meaning.

Optimize text, optimize for Lynx

So, how do we apply this to optimization? As previously mentioned, taking proper care of our images is one major step we can take to convey the proper information about the image to Google, and to our users.

Using the Lynx browser, you will clearly see the importance of source ordering your page’s content. If you have a thousand links to traverse before you even get to any content, you will quickly grow tired of the page. Obviously, in the mind of a Lynx user and by extension, Google, the content is less important than the links. Make sure to get the important content in your page to its proper place—at the top.

By stripping away the presentational aspects of our website, and bringing it all the way down to the very basics, you can start to catch a glimpse of what your page is lacking. For instance, you might have a wonderful page that you really love, but is ranking very low. After checking it in Lynx, you’ll discover that it’s no wonder Google doesn’t love that page. because there’s no content! The pictures are named “picture1.jpg”, etc., and have no <alt> tags to describe their content.

Where to get it

Lynx is available on all operating systems, and newer versions can even handle SSL.

• If you happen to be a Linux user, odds are that it might already be built in. If not, check your package manager for more info.
• For the Mac OSX user, there is a handy little tool called Lynxlet that makes it very easy to install and use. Or you can use the Macports package manager to compile it from source.
• For Windows users, your best bet is to get it straight from the source at lynx.isc.org, either in source code or as pre-compiled binaries (which means a .exe application for you non-techie folk out there…)

Optimize for Lynx, optimize for Google

As was stated, your website is a large collection of texts. It only makes sense, then, to maximize the textual value of your website so that the searchbots have plenty to look at and categorize.

By using the Lynx browser as part of your standard repertoire, you will not only catch errors before they come back to haunt you, you will also make your website more accessible and more importantly, searchable and indexable.