Can Spiders read and follow redirects?

[SearLancer]

Can most spiders read and/or follow redirects. The specific redirect I have is a shadow tag. I ran a couple spider simulators and it seems to read make it through the redirect, but I'd like some expert confirmation.

Thanks

[claus]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld SearLancer :)

>> a shadow tag

Sorry, i don't know what you mean by that, could you explain?

I could only find this description, and such a tag does not redirect:

<shadow>
The WebTV interface defines the <shadow> tag and renders the text with a slim, black shadow. The shadow is projected down and to the right of the text, as if the light source were in the upper-left corner of the page.

/claus

[SearLancer]

It's a tracking parameter. Set up with an image pixel to track user behavior on the site. It's basically just a redirect.

These redirects are set up on the front page and I want to be sure a spider will be able to crawl through these redirects to get to the secondary pages.

[claus]

I'm not entirely sure i understand it, but..

If it's basically a 1x1 px image that is used in stead of anchor text in an ordinary link, then it should be no problem. Only caveat is that the link shold be an ordinary one - it should not have too many parameters and specifically not parameters like session IDs.

/claus

[SearLancer]

It doesn't replace the anchor text. It only shows up when you click on the link ... the bottom navigation bar on the browser shows this shadow link when you scroll over the link with the mouse. So I'm thinking that a spider will try to follow this link but instead gets this "redirect url" first. Can the spider ride right through the redirect to the actual page? Or will it not like the redirect and head back out?

[claus]

Is it a javascript link? If yes, then the sppiders will not follow it. I'm sorry, but i still don't understand exactly how this link works, and i can't really answer unless i know exactly what's going on, as spiders dont "click" like real people do - is it possible for you to post some example code (of course make the code anonymous so it does not include your url). Either i need to see the code, or i need a more detailled description of how the link is built.

/claus