Links from index only?

Huh?

[zoobie]

I just read that Google only follows the links from the index page only. Well, my index consists of javascript buttons as the menu with the rest of the content in an iframe. The headline of my index is an <a href> to the default iframe which then has an <a href> in it pointing to a sitemap.

Will this work ok?
Thx

[DaveN]

No is the short answer, you need to get that sitemap on the home page proper,

sidenote google is starting to find http:// in javascript now

dave

[jcoronella]

DaveN, Have you confirmed this?

It would explain some things I've been seeing, but I'm not certain. This update schedule has me confused, and I don't know the timing of what links were included, when, etc.

It seems that it would be an easy thing to accomplish, so I'm not surprised.

[coolasafanman]

i use javascript links on my site to prevent google from crawling my site in such a way that would produce loads of duplicate content. I think I had a penalty until I changed some links to javascript.

Basically, I sell widgets (A), wodgets (B) and wudgets (C). on the index are js links where a surfer has the option to hide any or all of these items. The result is that each combination - ABC, AB, AC, BC, A, B, C produces different query strings in the URL that often produce highly similar pages. For my particular industry, these filters make my site more usable as people that like widgets may be reluctant to come to my site if they must also flip thru pages and pages of wodgets and wudgets.

Would using form links be better than JS, or will they crawl these too eventually? It seems to me that there needs to remain a way for a web designer to allow surfer navigation without a bot following certain types of links, to present a clearer image of a website in its listings.

BTW robots.txt would not help in this case based on the dynamic nature of the site.

[g1smd]

I see that a lot of banner ads are served using a document.write statement for the banner image and for the link URL that clicking on it directs you to. This handily keeps all of those links out of search engines. If Google are going to parse Javascript links then they will need some way of filtering out all the URLs that they discover behind banner ad images, otherwise they are going to be swamped with data.

[jtbell]

I just read that Google only follows the links from the index page only.

That's not true. I have several pages that aren't linked directly from my index (top-level) page, and aren't linked from outside my site, either. To get to them, you have to go from my index page through either one of two directory pages (which both list all of my content pages, in two different ways). They do fine in Google, by and large.

I list only my new or recently updated pages on my index page.