CSS & Search Engines

Do spiders index CSS rollout navigation?

[Scott_F]

Our site uses CSS - which is great for building and design. But the navigation is also CSS with pull down menus. Do I understand correctly that the SE spiders are unable to index anything beyond the main text of these navigational boxes. In other words, sub categories aren't indexing.

Any suggestions. I realize putting all the sublinks underneath the main as text links is ideal but tough for users and visually unappealing. We do use breadcrumbs on each page.

thoughts, ideas, comments, suggestions?

[Old_Honky]

If you have a site map with links to all pages your site should be spider friendly.

[sonjay]

Does your dropdown menu require javascript to function? If you turn off javascript in your browser and visit your site, are the links accessible to you, and do they work? If so, then they are indexable by the bots. If not, then they're not.

[encyclo]

I highly recommend installing the Web Developer extension for Firefox for testing in situations like this - it is available here:

[chrispederick.com...]

The extension allows you to easily disable both Javascript and all CSS styles. As spiders aren't taking into account of the styles when parsing the page, your document should function logically without anything other than the default styles and no scripting.

Many CSS drop-down menus are based on nested lists, which expand when unstyled, meaning that the entire menu is spiderable via standard links.