How Do Search Engines View Lists?

<ul>, <ol>, and <dl>: How much improtance is given?

[mep00]

I just read an article I found at WaSP [webstandards.org] about definition lists. While the focus of the article was CSS related, the follow search engine related point was made:

If content within a <dt> cannot be flagged as a heading, it cannot be given “heading” importance within the document hierarchy. Also, Google and other search engines will not index definition list content in the same way that they do for heading-based content.

This got me wondering about a few points:

1. In general, how are lists weighted?
2. Is there a difference between different list types?
3. Is a menu containing keywords helped or hurt by putting it in a list?
4. Since heading elements can be put in dd's and li's, does this constitute a work around?

One of the touted advantages of proper markup is that it's supposed to be more SE friendly; does that hold true here?

[martinibuster]

How Do Search Engines View Lists?

Good question.

Check your referrals to see if words in lists are ever words counted in referrals. I suspect they aren't weighed more or less than regular text.

This is tweaky. I'm not tweaky, so I don't put much thought to it. That's my temperament.

Anybody else have thoughts about this?

[anallawalla]

I have just put up the makings of a glossary so I have used a few DDs and DTs. I do get search hits for them.

I haven't seen anyone place any importance to lists and can't see what they convey in terms of SE ranking other than the mark of an organised mind :)

If you haven't seen it, look up an old thread called something like Brett's Quick Rank (good). It lists the numeric scores a few WWers have placed on various elements.