a couple of google questions:
1 - is there ANY chance that google will "see" text retrieved using ajax?
the user selects from a chain of select boxes and some text from the Db is displayed.
2 - if i change the page title using javascript, outside the HEAD area, will google index the modified title?
sorry if these are trivial questions and thanx for any reply
have a nice day :-)
What Google sees is what you see when you disable javascript on your browser. So the answer to both your questions is no.
The correct way to have all the data of your site indexed is to degrade gracefully inside <noscript> tags. For example, you could offer an interface to browse all the content of your database, using list and sublists of requests that point to proper result pages, that are well integrated in your site.
Warning note: your content must really be a noscript version of your site. If you create a special site, it becomes cloaking, which is forbidden.
Update: Since 2014, Google seems to support everything you can think of (including javascript and ajax).
Try using seo-browser.com or lynx browser to see how google see your site.
Also see this answer on Googlebot doesn't see jquery generated content and/or this document by Google, on ways you can have your AJAX content spidered.
