Does Google Follow links in dropdowns?

[stcrim]

Does anyone know if Google Follows the links in dropdown boxes. Have a client that want 100 percent of their links in a cgi driven dropdown - All links are visable in the code.

-s-

[Hawkgirl]

AFAIK, no.

If something requires interaction (e.g., mouseover, dropdown box) in order to make it work, Google can't follow it.

Googlebot is smart ... but not that smart.

<edit>clarity</edit>

[2_much]

Good question stcrim. I thought it did, but I'm beginning to wonder. I have some sites where Google followed a menu of links that move up (whatever that's called), but apparently it doesn't like the drop down because those links are not showing in the backward links.

[stcrim]

This is a plan CGI driven dropdown - no JS. Inktomi follows them just fine - Surely Google is light-years ahead of them.

Any thoughts?
-s-

[lazerzubb]

Well if i'm not misstaken it shouldn't be a problem as long as you have <option> tags, otherwise it's hard to say, mainly because there is hundreds of variations of a drop-down menu and the code looks different on all of them.

[Thanasus]

I have a DHTML tree menu on various sites. To ensure everything is crawled I have a text-based site map link on the bottom of every page. The site map lets google gobble up every page (less than 50 else I would break the site map up into various pages)

[jimbeetle]

I've got to second Thanasus. If in doubt -- heck, even if not in doubt -- always have a site map of some sort. Make it easy for the SEs and they'll gobble up every page.

[jomaxx]

No way will Google actually do the equivalent of clicking a GO button, but if the URL is written out somewhere in the HTML code (especially the full version starting http:) then it's possible Google might recognize it as a link.

[Thanasus]

I would have to disagree with you jomaxx... I woudl think google has to see a link surrounded by anchor tags otherwise it would waste its resources. Imagine all the web pages out there that explain to beginners how to property enter a URL into their browser URL bar. If google recognized plain text URL addresses as links, than we would see additional pages for backlinks.

[iJeep]

My experience has been that Google does not follow those links. I use JavaScript to hide mine on one of my sites so that it is not adding extra code and diluting my keywords...On my other site I am trying a new method that works with NN4:

<option value="pp.php?mmid=<?php echo "$MMID"?>"><a style="font-size:10px" href="pp.php?mmid=<?php echo "$MMID"?>"><?php echo "$MM"?></a><br></option>

The dropdown still works right in newer browsers. In browsers that do not work with dropdowns it shows as a list of text links!

[derekwit]

Fast, Inktomi and many other bots follow all of my drop down menus fine but Gbot does not seem to want to follow them. He will only get my index page and robots.txt file and that is it. I guess that means dumping drop downs and just using text links for me.

[Krapulator]

Use <noscript></noscript> and provide a plain text menu within them

[derekwit]

I went ahead and changed my drop menu to text links but I am still a little confused. I had at 5 to 10 links on that same page that were text links and Gbot still did not crawl them. Any ideas?

[iJeep]

I would give it time. I *think* google crawls all links on the cached version of the page, because I get hits from googlebot on pages that have been gone, but show up in cached versions. Hopefully on the next run through. It all takes time.

[mud]

Yes, I have seen it happen. I would post the example URL, however, its against the forum rules. It may matter how you code the drop down menu though... but google can follow them.

[aus_dave]

derekwit, as iJeep says it all takes time. Get a good log analyser and check what Google is actually doing at your site. I think it takes at least two months before a new site will get a regular visit from Google anyway. I would wait for at least one deep crawl and update cycle before getting too worried about it.

I found my drop-downs weren't very Google friendly so I added a site map. It's a good way to keep tabs on your site and the spiders definitely like it ;).

[derekwit]

I did the same with the site map. My only problem was I did not realize until after Gbot went through its deep crawl that I had more than 100 links on that page. So unfortunatly the only page that was indexed is my index page. So I changed my drop downs to text links hoping that would help and also brought my site map page to less than 100 links.