Hiding links in forms - SEO disadvantages?

[johnn]

I read that search engines do not index forms or content inside forms. If my web page contains a lot of links externally to other websites (and they'll not link back to my site), I'll turn each link into a form, and so there're many forms in a web page. Is this bad for SEO?

Thanks,
John

[heini]

John, too many forms on a page can of course make your code less spider friendly. Spiders like plain content in a basic and logical structure.
Also: outbound non reciprocal links are not neccessarily bad for your site.
If however you don't want to give the receiver the full SE benefit of the link you could also set it up as redirected links.

[andreasfriedrich]

I read that search engines do not index forms or content inside forms.

Fast and Google do index the content of form elements. And why wouldn´t they.

Andreas

[johnn]

Oh boy, they do index!