: If “_escaped_fragment_” shows up in Search Console URL Parameters, should you “Let Googlebot decide”? As far as we know, there should be no links to our site anywhere that include the

Posted in: #CrawlableAjax #EscapedFragment #Googlebot #GoogleSearchConsole

As far as we know, there should be no links to our site anywhere that include the _escaped_fragment_ parameter used for fetching HTML snapshot versions of our JavaScript-heavy pages.

We use the technique described here to handle pages without hash fragments: developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started, and we add into the head section of affected pages. To the best of our knowledge, the only way the parameter should ever get included is if a spider detects this meta element and makes a subsequent request with the parameter appended. We never include _escaped_fragment_ directly in any links.

Recently, we have seen a growing number of "URLs monitored" in the URL Parameters section of Search Console that include _escaped_fragment_ on them - currently over 13,000. We have left the item set to "Let Googlebot decide" for the time being, but I'd love any insights about whether this is the correct setting for this strange case?

We know _escaped_fragment_ is deprecated by Google and big thanks for any tips.

URL structure example:
example.com/#!төмөр-хүлэг/

and Googlebot visited the corresponding page:
example.com/?_escaped_fragment_=төмөр-хүлэг/

We see that in our log.

root html snapshot see here
product list html snapshot see here
product details html snapshot see here