How do you do dynamic refresh of a single div tab using php/ajax and have the content actually change the local html on the page

Question

How do you do dynamic refresh of a single div tab using php/ajax and have the content actually change the local html on the page (so that it is changed when you go to ‘view source’ in a browser) instead of just putting the change in a JavaScript object? I am trying to design a webpage that loads search results without refreshing the entire page. I use a simple hash followed by a GET/query string request to determine what content to load. This gets passed to a JavaScript XMLHttpRequest, then to some php which picks up the GET and passes it to a SOAP service and finally echo’s the SOAP results back to the XMLHttpRequest to get displayed in a document.getElementById div change. This works fine for usual display in conventional browsers. However I am concerned that search bots and screen readers are not going to recognize the majority of the content that shows in browsers because it is all contained within a client side JavaScript object.
So, I guess my first question is: is this a valid concern? If it is, is there a work around?
Thanks!

Answer 1

AJAX content is very hard to get indexed. Google has webmaster guidelines for AJAX. This should get you started in the right direction on getting your content indexed.

Answer 2

I'm inexperienced with search engine behavior but as far as i know the best option is to load the full content of your div on a php page, when the page load you can include that page inside the div, and then start using js/jquery to refresh that every so many seconds.

this way when a search bot gets on the site it will see the current content, and users will see it update.

updating the div box can be done quite easy using ajax function and jquery.