Which resolution does googlebot and other spiders use?

[helenp]

Hi,
Just to take away my hover menu for mobiledevices etc, I added to my css a @media that for mobile hide the dropdown but for higher resoution shows the dropdown.
I want google and other spiders to read the dropdown menu as the links are in there and also there are many keywords in the name of the links.
I just realized dont have a clue what google do with this, if google use any resolution etc:

I have this in my css:
To hide:
@media screen and (max-width: 1025px){
menu li display: none;}

and to show:
@media screen and (min-width: 1025px){
menu li display: block;}

I am now very frightened google wont be able to view my menu.....

Thanks for any help

[agent_x]

If you're doing it in CSS then the plain old Googlebot should still see the HTML for the menu and spider it. As far as resolution is concerned, I don't know what the normnal Googlebot uses but the version that creates the site previews I think uses a 1024x1024 resolution.

[helenp]

Hmm,
Thanks, If googlebot doesn't follow css,
then how can they know the site is optimized for mobile devices as I read comments that they valuate page that are optimized for diferent devices and resolutions, I remember a link of google saying with the panda update I think it was they said they give more value of whats on the higer top of the page.

Also some says not to use display:none as its hidden txt, but as I understand googleboot does not read the css, only the html.
Is this true, if so to get a penalizacion for hidden content then it must be manual viewed.

Sorry, but I dont feel very comfortable with what I done and want to be 100% it is correct as if not, it will be our disappearing in google :(

[leadegroot]

If its in the html then the bots can read it, fear not! :)
Historically it has been a problem for crawlability when content was written out with javascript, but the bots have gotten good at reading those too, so people who do it that way sometimes don't have a problem.
On top of reading the html, googlebot also reads the css, but it doesn't use it to see what the screen looks like, in the same way that we humans do - it may generate the screenshot for things like preview, but there is a disconnect in how it puts it all together. Its more like 'measuring' the css to see what it does (hidden text? Y/N adblocks obscured? Y/N and so on)

Sounds like you'll be fine :)

[not2easy]

Google has a bot for mobile devices, you can fetch your pages using the google-mobile bot in GWT and probably get more specific advice about that bot right there too.

[agent_x]

On top of reading the html, googlebot also reads the css, but it doesn't use it to see what the screen looks like,

I think actually after Panda that may well be exactly what it does do.

[helenp]

On top of reading the html, googlebot also reads the css, but it doesn't use it to see what the screen looks like,

I think actually after Panda that may well be exactly what it does do.

That was what I thought also
Thanks alll

[phranque]

you might consider testing your content with the Browser Size tool: http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ [browsersize.googlelabs.com]

there are some hints about using this tool in the Inside Search blog post about Page layout algorithm improvement:
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html [insidesearch.blogspot.com]

[topr8]

... i agree that is a handy guide tool, however it is hopeless for sites that don't have a fixed width. eg if you view such a site on a wide monitor, it shows most of the right side would not be viewable in most post sizes, however of course it would as as the viewport gets smaller the site stretches less.