Links in drop down boxes

are they spidered?

[grnidone]

OK,

Lets say I want to put links from other sites on my site to up my linking strategy for Google. And lets say I put those links in a drop down box.

Would those links be spidered if I used plain html drop boxes, or is it ignored? My gut says 'if in a dropdown it will be ignored', but I have never gotten a clear answer one way or the other.

Thanks,
-G

[rcjordan]

Google follows them in plain drop-downs.

[rogerd]

Grnidone, I'd include HTML links to be sure the links get spidered. I usually include a text navigation bar at the bottom of each page for this purpose. If you have lots of links (that would make a navigation bar unwieldy), create a site map or directory and link to that from your home page.

[grnidone]

RC:
Are you sure they are followed? I just can't see how they would be unless there was some sort of naming convention of the drop down box.

ie NAME="location" ...?
-G

[littleman]

Grnidone - I've read this from more than one source of first hand testimonial.

[rcjordan]

I'm sure the text/kws within the drop-downs are being indexed. As for the spidering, I've had a page or two show up in Google (and Hotbot, maybe? fuzzy there.) that I could only trace back to a drop-down.

Like the noframes discussion, I think there may be plenty of SE's that don't follow them, so I wouldn't count on it for anything mission-critical.

[NFFC]

They follow this:

<form>
<select name="nameofform" onChange='top.location.href=this.form.nameofform.options[this.form.nameofform.selectedIndex].value'>
<OPTION value="#">Select Your Destination</OPTION>
<OPTION value="homepage.htm">Home</OPTION>
</select>
</form>

[rcjordan]

They = which?

[NFFC]

>They = which?

On second thoughts *none*. Will have a more detailed look later but it looks like I jumped to a conclusion without analysising in more detail.

[rcjordan]

OK, in the grand tradition of our democracy, I'm officially moving my vote to "UNdecided" on the link-following, but leaving it as "Definitely" on the secondary issue of text/keywords in the drop-down.

[stcrim]

My experiments showed "me" that Google follows them to their outcome. AltaVista indexes their text (may have followed them back when AV followed links - may in the future.)

Had a page with absolutely nothing but combo boxes on it. AV indexed and ranked high based on the text in the boxes.

Google also reads the text in the combos and considers it as it would any text link. In a couple of cases it appears they may even consider it more than regular text links...

Mine are CGI - can't speak for java

My 2 cents
Steve

[rcjordan]

>Google also reads the text in the combos and considers it as it would any text link. In a couple of cases it appears they may even consider it more than regular text links...

Yes. I'm seeing extra weight on the text, too. That's actually why I started back-tracking to the source of some of my Google referrals, I had pages of modest relevance scoring well on an incredibly competitive term (Myrtle Beach). The only, repeat only, place the term was on the page was in a drop-down. I should add, however, that this is also a large, themed site.

[grnidone]

OK, so the jist is, Google will look at the text in the drop down boxes, but will not spider through to the links destination..

Dang. I was hoping to trade drop down boxes with some other sites to up the sites pointing to me.

Back to the drawing board, I guess.
-G

[stcrim]

grnidone -

Your idea is correct!!! See your stickyMail for an example

Steve

[Brett_Tabke]

me too. Drops downs are working great on Google. As some of you have seen, I've been trying to work them in more effectively right here on the board. I've yet to come up with anything I'd like to stick with for linkage purposes.