javascript - Regex replace string but not inside html tag

Question

I want to replace a string in HTML page using JavaScript but ignore it, if it is in an HTML tag, for example:

<a href="google.com">visit google search engine</a>
you can search on google tatatata...

I want to replace google by <b>google</b>, but not here:

<a href="google.com">visit google search engine</a>
you can search on <b>google</b> tatatata...

I tried with this one:

regex = new RegExp(">([^<]*)?(google)([^>]*)?<", 'i');
el.innerHTML =  el.innerHTML.replace(regex,'>$1<b>$2</b>$3<');

but the problem: I got <b>google</b> inside the <a> tag:

<a href="google.com">visit <b>google</b> search engine</a>
you can search on <b>google</b> tatatata...

How can fix this?

Answer 1

You'd be better using an html parser for this, rather than regex. I'm not sure it can be done 100% reliably.