google and drop down menus

[jayzee]

Hi,
I want to ask if anyone has any thoughts on how google handles drop down selection boxes.

A client of mine has given me an example of a page that he has found on a google search that has in its description, words that only appear in a drop down
(the search is on google.co.uk, pages from the web searching for "medical trials kent")
the result that is returned is

Register for a Medical Trial
Med Trial match medical trial candidates to medical establishments. ... Isle of Wight, Isles of Scilly, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire ...
www.medtrials.co.uk/register.php

the only place any of the place names appear is in the drop down menu on the page that this result links to.

Initialy I had thought that google would just ignore dropdown menus and although this seems to start suggesting maybe google does read through them I am still not convinved.

To get this list of places to appear like this google would have to have striped all coding from around the place names and inserted commas between each place. it has also randomly picked a selection of place names half way through the list. is this likely?

one option is that the site is using some sort of cloaking but I am not sure how to tell if this is happening or not.

from reading other posts on this forum I am left a little unclear.

It seems it may be possible for google to see the text but not to follow the link - if the drop down is being used for navigtion.

thanks in advance for any advice
J