Just trying to use the test as googlebot feature. It works about 20% of the time I've tried to use it. Most often, I get weird errors with no idea what's wrong. In this case, I get this:

Microsoft JScript runtime error '800a139e'
Not a primary expression
/ScriptLibrary/dmxDataBindingsSEO.asp, line 858

I can't tell if the extension is working right, or something is wrong in my page that needs to be fixed. Altogether, it's not a very reliable feature - "test as googlebot".

Here's my page, which actually works fine.
latc.la/directory.asp

Hi Steve,
The issue is your page code. You have the following empty expression data-binding-value="{{}}" here:

<select name="selectClass" id="selectClass" data-binding-repeat-children="{{classList.data}}" data-binding-id="selectClass" data-binding-value="{{}}">

None of the Data Bindings expression can be empty: {{}}

I followed George's instructions on the SEO extension on how to make the default (first) option in a dynamic drop down blank. That's why that's in there.

Still, shouldn't the SEO extension give you some other indication of what the problem is without just throwing an error like that?

Unfortunately we cannot predict all of the wrong code options that might happen on users' pages.
Please check the following video describing how to have the first option empty/static:
www.dmxzone.com/go/22329/dynamic-drop-down-list-with-static-first-option

Understandable.

I followed the instructions to doing it that way, and using the option2 for bindings is a much better way of doing that. I could even give that first non-usable selection a label, which is great.

However, my page still won't pass googlebot. This time it's a different error.

Microsoft JScript runtime error '800a139e'
Lexer Error: Unexpected token '}' at column 12 in expression [memberWphone}} | ]
/ScriptLibrary/dmxDataBindingsSEO.asp, line 445

I understand what you're saying - you can't account for all problems in code, but the problem with these errors, is that it doesn't give you much info on what's wrong in the code. The concerning part is that unless this error is resolved, is this page not going to be SEO friendly with the search engines?

The idea behind the SEO extension is great, but it's not at all easy to get your page to validate through googlebot. The whole point of these extensions is so you don't have to write or understand the code behind all of this, and when you get errors like this you're kind of dead in the water.

Wait, I just figured out something.

On this page:
latc.la/directory.asp

It won't pass googlebot because of something to do with the memberWphone field. So, I was messing around and I removed the space between the phone number and the email address. Guess what... it passes googlebot. But you cannot just run all of your content together! You need to have spaces between words and in this case I was just trying to use something to visually separate the phone and email address - just a dash or a pipe (- or |).

No matter what I use between phone and email, whether it be any character or even just a space, googlebot test fails. Why is that? It seems like you should be able to separate fields from one another. Right?

As a side note, can you change the topic of this thread? I see it ended up being "The", and it was supposed to say "The test as googlebot feature doesn't work very well".

Hello Steve,

This issue will be fixed in the update that is coming on Wednesday.

This reply was removed on 4/21/2014 5:20:05 PM.
See the changelog

Not much has changed on this extension. Test as google bot is still pretty much worthless unless you are just using it on a very simple page. Using something as basic as a data-driven dropdown menu kills the test as googlebot feature and gives you errors like this:

Microsoft JScript runtime error '800a1391'
'expStripped' is undefined
/ScriptLibrary/dmxDataBindingsSEO.asp, line 637

Per your previous instructions, it was because of the data driven dropdown that googlebot won't work, but I've created a version of this page without the drop down and test as googlebot still does not work.
latc.la/directory-nodropdown.asp?_escaped_fragment_=true

So, it would seem that despite having spent the money and followed the instructions, these pages still won't render for the search engines correctly.

Hello Steve,
We are going to check the errors you are getting on your page. The data-driven dropdown menus or any other data-driven functionality on your page are not supposed and to "kill" the extension actually.

Please check your email, i've sent you the fixed files.This will be included in the upcoming update also.

I have implemented the file you've sent, and it did improve on the error I last reported, but now I get this error again, which I've seen and reported before:

Microsoft JScript runtime error '800a139e'
Lexer Error: Unexpected token '}' at column 12 in expression [memberWphone}} ]
/ScriptLibrary/dmxDataBindingsSEO.asp, line 445

From previous testing I found out that the way to solve this problem is remove all spaces between the phone field and the other fields around it. Problem is, you need spaces between different elements in order for them to look good on the page and to be readable.

Hi Steve,
I've sent you another update. We are going to release an updated version of the extensions in a couple of days, which includes the fixes i sent you.

Yes, I used the latest version you sent me and everything works great now. Thanks!

These problems continue to pop up with this extension. It's been a problem more often than it's been helpful.

Microsoft JScript runtime error '800a01b6'
Object doesn't support this property or method
/ScriptLibrary/dmxDataBindingsSEO.asp, line 2372

These new extensions render page content in a way that is invisible to search engines, so this extension is quite important.

Hopefully you can shed some light on what the problem is.