AJAX and SEO

AJAX...you all love it and you know it! Web 2.0 has given us AJAX and its use has become very prevalent. It affords us some very cool dynamic features and functionality that improves the user experience and makes sites more responsive without the need to refresh the page. Good examples of cutting edge AJAX implementation include Google Maps and Earth. However, a much debated drawback has to do with its purported ability to encumber the indexability of content by the search engines. I searched for content on this topic and ironically there didn't seem to be a whole lot. The predominant technology behind AJAX is JavaScript, wherein valuable indexable content resides, however, the search engines are unable to parse that content from the javascript given that they don't run JavaScript on the pages they index. As a result, the SEO gains are impacted.

Some of the solutions being offered up out there include creating a plain and static html version of your site, adding your ajaxed content to noscript tags, and boycott AJAX altogether. Whatever the solution(s), this is spawning a whole new debate and giving rise to a whole host of solution offerings dedicated to addressing this issue. Would love to hear from some of you on your experience with this issue.