can google crawl dropdown menus

[jamie]

i've had a search, and the general concensus appears to be 'no'. does anyone have any input on this, or does anyone know a .js fly-out/drop down menu system which can definitely be crawled by google?

i know in an ideal world that we shouldn't need to use javascript on a site navigation given the differences in display, and we shall put the standard navigation linking to all major topics down the left hand side of the page anyway. but..... we would like to offer immediate access to the most popular bits of the site without user scrolling down. and we have noticed that google enjoys crawling down the links which it reads first, i.e. the top navigation bar. hence if possible, a crawlable dropdown?

cheers

[Nick_W]

If you were to use hidden div's it would work but if you are going to put the links on the page anyway, why bother worrying about it? Google and her little friends will still find them..

Nick

[Macguru]

>>a crawlable dropdown?

DHTML and CSS makes great crawlable drop down menues with sub levels if you wish.

Here is a cut and paste freebee you can customise.

[computerarts.co.uk...]

You can find many more here :
[google.com...]

[jamie]

many thanks both of you.

[Helpmebe1]

macguru,
Search engines can pick up the text in the drop downs on the page you hyperlinked to? I didnt know that.. so if I put say.. Halloween costumes as the head title and then the drop down for that word said clown, superman, george bush ... it would pick up the type of costumes? How cool is that? I didnt know it could do that? Perhaps this is a good thing to have on your site then to increase keywords?

[Macguru]

Yes if your code looks like this :

<DIV id="drop1" class="dropdown" style="left:-1px;" onmouseover="f7_showdrop(0)" onmouseout="f7_hidedrop()">
<P>
&#149; <A href="foo1.htm" class="dropitem">Foo 1 costume</A><BR>
&#149; <A href="foo2.htm" class="dropitem">Foo 2 costume</A><BR>
&#149; <A href="foo3.htm" class="dropitem">Foo 3 costume</A><BR>
&#149; <A href="foo4.htm" class="dropitem">Foo 4 costume</A></P>
</DIV>

Goggle (and others) will find these links and count hyperlink text.