Today the search giant Google began discussing ways in which it can begin crawling Ajax based websites.  This would be a welcomed change for webmasters that are forced to choose between the usability benefits of an Ajax based site and the necessity of sticking to website designs and functions that are more search engine friendly.

There are some challenges that Google would be faced if this were to be implemented.  One that comes to mind would be some of the more “shady” webmasters manipulating the code to serve different information to search engines than to site visitor’s, similar to cloaking methods currently used by many “blackhat” webmasters.

The announcement was just made today and the idea is still somewhat in its infancy.  It is certainly a step in the right direction and would be an excellent enhancement.  Google is welcoming any feedback on ideas / concerns with this.  Feedback can be provided here.

Below is a slideshow of the proposal: