Does Googlebot Follow HotSpot Map Links These Days?

[Drum]

Tests I had done years ago showed the Googlebot had a hard time following hotspot map links. Is that the same condition today?

If Google is crawling hotspot links fine these days, can you nofollow a hotspot map link?

[tedster]

Last time I tested this (quite a while ago) I learned that image maps were used for url discovery but not for link juice.

The biggest problem for Google is that an image map can easily create a hidden link by just placing the coordinates off the visible image. Yes, this could be checked automatically, but was a bit of a spammer playground and apparently Google chose not to give credit at the time I tested.

Any recent testing would be interesting to hear about - but I would never suggest an image map today if the links were important, certainly not as the only place those links were on the site.

I know second-hand of a test done for rel=nofollow on image map links. The person who did the test (within the past year) found that even with rel=nofollow, the urls were still followed. Since it wasn't my test and I did not access all the data, I cannot 100% confirm the results, but thought I would share this as a data point.

[Drum]

Thanks Tedster for the quick reply.