I've read that google MAY follow links that are contained within javascript if the javascript is on the physical html page, not a library file that is.

This question comes up re javascripted drop menus, the kind where javascript writes out the whole menu.

However, this 'may' is so vague that you should probably simply say to yourself: a link that is not a real <a href> hardcoded link will not be followed by search engines, then you'll be safe.

If you want search engines to follow links, make sure those links exist somewhere on the page, not in a form submit button, easy ways to do that: put the link in the footer, add it somewhere else on the page, make a small image with no border and add the link to that.

Hi isitreal,

Many thanks for the reply.

>>put the link in the footer, add it somewhere else on the page, make a small image with no border and add the link to that.
Is this safe?

I know it would be best practice to put the link into an href tag, but it kind of plays havoc with the current design and the surrounding form buttons. I am just trying to get off with being a little lazy and have the input type=button do the work of an href tag and hoping that SE's will follow it...

-George

hoping that SE's will follow it...

That's all it would be, hope. Google might, the others probably won't is my guess.

If you don't want to change the design at all, just add a 1 pixel transparent gif, set border:0, then put the link on that, it doesn't work as well as a text link for search engines, but they do follow image links or else none of the image based navigation sites would ever have gotten spidered.

Or if it's an important page that you want spidered for its content, add a link to the bottom navigation with some text, most people don't pay much attention to bottom nav stuff, but search engines do.

Thanks isitreal,

I shall follow your advice, the link is of importance in the input type=button tag as it returns the user to the 'home' page, therefore it is located on each page throughout the site. But my main concern was the SE's following the link, as it proved in the past by removing this link had an adverse affect on my listings in the SERP's.

Once again thanks for the help.

-George

The term candidates of an HTML page are sequences of non-space characters found either outside HTML tags or inside HTML meta tags, excluding such sequences found between script tags.

this is from the term vector database [www9.org] document wrttten by one of the main Google phd boys. While this might change, this was written in 1999 or 2000, I'm not sure exactly which year. At that point google was not reading script tags, I would assume they were also not reading javascript in onclick or submit events either.

So you dont' have to guess, you can actually pretty much know.

Thanks isitreal,

I shall have a read over that link, your help and input was appreciated...

-George