google and drop down menus

does she follow them?

[soapystar]

does google follow links within drop down menus?...if ive got a search that has 50 possiblities does google follow href from a drop down menu or do i have to have each as a plain text link if i want google to follow from the homepage?..and what about this problem with google limiting 100 links per page...what if you have a choice of ways for people to search and the total links would be 200...is google saying we can't put all those choices on one page?....what if 3 links go to one page..is that seen as one link or 3?..and a page with 20 bookmarks...are those bookmarks counted as links?....damn....its easier to understand women than google!

[hakre]

might be easier, because google is under heavy development and tweaking all the time. you can never trust her. what worked today will fail tomorrow.

i don't understand what's making a webmasters life complicated with google. just build a good page and you'll get the ranking.

for a drop-down menu (select/form) it is not possible for google to get the links, maybe if you put them fully into the value="" attribute. fully means with http:// in front. that might be parsed by google, too.

[soapystar]

notice the 'maybe' in your reply?....thats the point...doh!

[vitaplease]

[webmasterworld.com...]

As far as I know it indexes the text of the label of the drop down menu, not the link.

The hundred links limit is more of a protective advice towards webmasters from Google IMO. Lets say you have a PR1 sitemap with 200 links, chances are the PR of the linked to page is too low to index?
[webmasterworld.com...]

>what if 3 links go to one page..is that seen as one link or 3?

Check it out and report back in two months, I'll refrain from making analogies with women ;)

[hakre]

yes vitaplease, that threads answers a lot of the questions and has some really good points and going arounds in it. goot tip!

[creative craig]

I think that there maybe problems as with the drop down menus it would use JavaScript, and Google cant follow JavaScript links at present.

Craig

[soapystar]

i was thinking drop down menus in a form..sorry for the confusion..with a go button..just plain html

[o0_cops_0o]

I would also like to know this answer, i also have drop down menu with links to other pages on my site? is this a problem for the spiders? If so should i build a site map?

[Robert Charlton]

In the first thread that vitaplease linked to, msg#12 says:

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

There was no comment or response to this. Does it work?

[moose606]

I use javascript generated drop down menus on my sites, andI believe most spiders do not handle javascript very well. What I do is to duplicate all the menu inks on the bottom of the page, in text links.