DHTML menus and googlebot

I've read the archives but I'm still not sure....

[wingslevel]

I am testing a new site with dhtml drop down menus. In testing it with Brett's spider simulator ( [searchengineworld.com...] ), I couldn't get the sim to follow my dhtml links. Now I know that Brett's spider isn't the same as googlebot, but nonetheless, this makes me nervous.

I had his sim check a few other sites like novell (absolutely gorgeous menus) and dhtmlcentral - it couldn't follow them either. At both of these sites, the internal pages did have pr and were in the google index - there weren't any text or image links to these pages and no sitemap, so I have to conclude that googlebot did successfully spider them.

[ekimmerce]

Hallo,

If you've got a spiderable sitemap, submit that to google and you shouldn't have any problems. you can then have the menus however you want.

[hiker_jjw]

All because a page shows a PR rating doesn't mean that the page is listed in Google! I've seen the Google Toolbar give my pages a "default" value. These were pages that are excluded/denied access to using a robot.txt file.

Search to see how many pages from your site are listed in Google to get an idea if it has craweled your site.

Google Search:
site:www.yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com

Also, check your server log on a daily basis. Search the log for "googlebot". You'll be able to view what the bot has followed.

Also, what about providing "text based links" at the bottom of your page(s) to provide GoogleBot with a way to follow your site? What about using text links in the body of your page to allow the GoogleBot to follow your site?

Providing a site map page is a solution, but it will not distribute PR from page to page in a beneficial way. This is because that one site map page will have it's PR divided up among all the pages it's linked to.

Instead, reconsider using the DHTML menu! It's pretty, but is it worth loosing all that potential traffic from Google?