I’m trying to make my AJAX website crawlable by Google and need help implementing the escaped fragment support on my server side.
Currently my site uses hashbang URLs in the #!/ format which works fine for users, but I know Google needs the escaped fragment version to crawl the content properly.
The issue I’m facing is understanding how to configure my server to handle requests like example.com/?_escaped_fragment_=products and make it serve the same content as example.com/#!/products would show to regular visitors.
I’ve read about this Google crawling scheme but I’m not sure about the actual server implementation. Should I be doing URL rewriting or some kind of routing setup? What’s the proper way to detect these crawler requests and respond with the right content?
Any guidance on the server configuration steps would be really helpful. I’m basically stuck on the technical implementation part even though I have the hashbang URLs ready.
Google deprecated the escaped fragment scheme in 2015, so don’t bother implementing it now. I dealt with this exact issue on a client project in 2016 - we’d built everything around hashbang URLs before finding out Google had already dropped support. Ended up completely restructuring the app to use proper URLs with server-side rendering instead. Just migrate to the History API with pushState for navigation and add server-side rendering or pre-rendering. Search engines can then crawl your pages normally without any fragment workarounds. Puppeteer or Prerender.io work great for generating static HTML versions of your dynamic content for crawlers.
hey, just a heads up, google stopped supporting the escaped fragment long ago. it’s better to go for pushState with server-side rendering. way easier for crawlers than messing with hashbangs!
You’re using an outdated approach. Google killed the escaped fragment scheme back in 2015, so any server implementation won’t help your SEO. I learned this the hard way - spent weeks debugging crawler issues on a legacy app with hashbang URLs before finding Google’s buried deprecation notice. Modern search engines want standard HTTP URLs that serve real content without needing JavaScript. Switch to HTML5 History API with proper server-side routing for the same paths your hashbangs use now. Convert /#!/products to /products and have your server render the right content. It’s some work, but you’ll get way better SEO than any fragment workaround.
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