Search engine bots "seeing through" Javascript?
In my efforts to build my website's backlinks, I have come across many sites that like to track the number of clicks their links get on their links page or directory. Example:
http://www.photolinks.com/PhotoShop_Tutorials.html
You will notice my site, Photoshop Guides, has not recieved a direct link. Instead, my link goes to:
http://www.photolinks.com/redirect.h...06112203062062
From what I understand, I will only benefit from the traffic of this link. I do not gain any PR benefit.
In an effort to improve these link click counting/tracking scripts, I was going to make a Javascript-based script. At first, I thought AJAX would be the best solution. When the user clicks the link, an AJAX request is sent to record the click and in the meantime, the user is taken to their destination via direct link. But certain ways of clicking that link aren't tracked.
The onclick event triggers when clicked, but using my scroll wheel to click it and open the link in a new Firefox tab, the AJAX function isn't called.
So I moved to onmouseup but realized that if you are tabbing through links and hit Enter, the "click" isn't recorded either.
Then I decided to try onfocus to just change the link to the tracking script's URL. So when the page loads, you have a direct link. But when the link is in focus (clicked, tabbed through, etc), the URL changes to your tracking script. This then lead to me researching about Googlebot's ability to "read through" and possibly execute Javascript.
Now finally, my question. If I have a link that looks like this:
HTML Code:
<a href="http://www.photoshopguides.com" onfocus="this.href='track.php?url=http://www.photoshopguides.com'">Photoshop Guides</a>
...will I gain the PR benefit of the direct link via href? Or will Googlebot, and other search engine bots, be able to "see through" my Javascript mask and give the PR gain to the tracking script or give no PR gain at all?
