Disabled_Master - 7:11 pm on Feb 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

Don't know if this is the correct forum for this search engine question. I see related topics in all kinds of forums when I did a search but nothing specific that answered my questions.

My question has to do with how search engines detect and follow links. I have in mind creating clickable buttons that recursively call the same web page (actually a php script). I know search engines use the anchor tag and from reading other threads on WebMasterWorld I believe that search engine bots consider

<A href="currentURL?parm1=value1">button text goes here</A>
and
<A href="currentURL">Basic text goes here</A>
as two separate links and will follow both.

An alternate to using the anchor tag to create a clickable button would be:

<form action="currentURL" method="GET">
<input name="parm1" type=hidden value=value1>
<input type="submit" value="button text goes here">
</form>

using php this is easily decoded and I believe that the URL transmitted looks like the anchor tag example. Alternately I could use the post method

<form action="currentURL" method="POST">
<input name="parm1" type=hidden value=value1>
<input type="submit" value="button text goes here">
</form>

which is also easily handled by php.

My question is will the search engine bots detect and follow the form submit links (i.e., the specified action URL) with the hidden parameters transmitted as well? Will the search engines consider forms with the same URL but with different parameters different links as they apparently do when detecting anchor tags? Particularily interested in the case of the post method where many parameters may be transmitted.

FYI: Relate topics I found at WebbMasterWorld are:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]