What does Google read first

whne positioning with tables

[annej]

I like having an index column on the left side of my pages. It just occured to me that the googlebot might be reading the index column first. That would mean the key content words I want to have noticed would not be toward the top.

Am I right on this?

Anne

[eaden]

It reads the html code from left to right, top to bottom. So by "viewing source" of your page, you will see what is at the top, and what is at the bottom.

[le_gber]

look at your html code and I think the robot will follow it from top to bottom ...

leo

<added> eaden u r too fast :) </added>

[cwebb]

There is an easy workaround, just use a first row, leave the first column there empty and merge the second column in the first row with the content and put the content there sio it gets indexed first!

[canuck]

I believe this is pretty much what the above was speaking of (Rowspan technique):

<table>
<tr><td> -spacer/no content- </td>
<td valign="top" rowspan="2">

Body Of Page

</td></tr>
<tr><td valign="top">

Menu

</td> etc...

The 2nd Valign is most likely needed, the first depends.

- canuck

[vmaster]

cwebb, I used to use that trick ages ago, but is does lead to interesting problems when right content exceeds the menu content significantly. One's much better off using external stylesheets, which I do now.

[MeditationMan]

I'm moving over to CSS layout, which allows me to have the navigation links look like they're first but to actually be listed last in the html.

I believe this is also good for blind people who use reading programs. It must be very tedious having to listen to the same menu before you get to the content every time you open a new page.

[hallooo]

What do you mean with:
"lead to interesting problems when right content exceeds the menu content significantly"

Can you be a little more specific.

[annej]

The table fix looks complicated enough I think I'll try the CSS route. I can see from the responses I need to do something.

Anne

edit - It just occured to me I could simply put my index in a right column instead of left. That would put content first.

[HitProf]

See also this question:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[FourDegreez]

When using CSS, you're using absolute positioning... am I right?

[nativenewyorker]

FourDegreez,

Yes, you can use div tags with absolute positioning to optimize your pages for search engines.

<div style="position:absolute; left:**px; top:&&px">Text to be positioned</div>

Substitute ** and && with numbers.

Ted