Dropdown Menus and Google

Do they help Googlebot spider the site?

[Silent_Bob]

I've noticed that two of the sites who rank very well in my industry have a dropdown menu with links to every product they offer. Would this help with rankings?

My thinking is that if I have a site with PR5, doing this would give each product page a PR3 or 4 as well as helping the bots to spider the whole site. It also would be convenient for the user.

[Yidaki]

URL's in Dropdown Menus can't be crawled by google. At least, they can't be followed like standard href links and thus won't carry any pr.

I'd build one or more site maps (with a maximum of 100 links each, less is better) and link the site map(s) from your index page. That's the best strategy imho.

Drop down lists and menus habe been discussed a lot here. Try a site search for Drop Down [google.com].

[Silent_Bob]

Thanks for the input.

I did orginally think that dropdown menus weren't crawled, but examining our competitors site made me think otherwise.

One thing I did notice is that it looks to me like google definitely reads the items on the list. On a keyphrase that one of the competitors sites ranks #1 for, the keyphrase is repeated several times in the dropdown menu with a few words in between, and in their listing at the top of the serps this exact sequence of words appears in the description.

[thaedge]

Anyone else seen Google index or a boost sites that use dynamic/css style drop downs? Currently redoing a site and from the looks of it the new site will have this type of navigation. Curious as to any possible problems going this route that I should be worried about.
- Thanks

[trimmer80]

I use drop down menus all the time, I also include <noscript>ahrefs</noscript> and a sitemap to make sure. I dont want to start a drop down menu debate, but I prefer them for smaller sites as it gives the ability to easily navigation through multiple levels. Also it is good to distribute PR if set up properly.
Depending on the number of pages and type of site, my site structure usually resembles the following.

< 60 pages
Home Page -> All Pages (using Drop Down Menu)

> 60 < 1000
Home Page -> 20-40 Sub Pages ->each with-> 10-30 End Level Pages

>1000
Home Page -> 40 Sub Pages ->each with-> 40 Sub Pages

This is so that PR get distributed to the end level pages and all pages get crawled. It is what I have found effective.
of course you may also want to use multiple navigation type to be sure.

[ThomasB]

dropdown menus work perfectly with Google. I wouldn't worry about that.

Linking a big number of pages costs a lot of research, but the way just described is pretty good. Though I'd risk adding 1 or 2 more links ;)

[drbrain]

If they are CSS or CSS/js dropdown menus with real anchors inside, (where the js or CSS only moves/hides menu items for display purposes) the crawler will have no problem crawling the links.

In short, if the links work in a text-only browser, they'll work for Google.