Do Spiders Read URL's in Form Select HTML?

[StaceyJ]

Not sure if this is where this goes, but it seemed the most likely.

I have a category page about Widgets which now covers 3 subsets of Widgets, but they are all still closely related. I'm not really ready to give them each their own separate category page, but I can filter results using a dropdown box and send the user to a page with just one subset of Widgets. What I was wondering is if I put the URL's to these filtered results into a form like so

<form>
<select>
<option value="/red_widgets">Red Widgets</option>
<option value="/redder_widgets">Redder Widgets</option>
<option value="/reddest_widgets">Reddest Widgets</option>
</select>
</form>

Will the spiders pick up those URL's inside a Form, or will they not even consider them as URL's as they are?

I can use simple JavaScript to make the select functional, my main concern is duplicate content since some identical widgets will now be on 2 separate pages, the main Widgets page along with the filtered Red, Redder or Reddest Widgets pages.

[too much information]

To answer your question, no I don't think any spiders are going to interpret those values as links. In a form an option value can be anything and is very rarely an actual URL, so the only thing that benefits is the fact that "Red, Redder and Reddest Widgets" are listed as options on the page and that may help your page a small bit.

Javascript will definitely hide your links from any search engine spiders, use it to make your forms function but make your links ... LINKS.

Overall I think you are over thinking things. The duplicate content thing refers to identical pages and (in my opinion) is an issue if the identical pages are on two different domains. I'm not so sure it will really penalize you if it's on your own site other than the fact that it means that your site is not well organized if it is copying it's own content.

Think on a much more basic level here, link your pages to related pages on your site with real links. It's OK if you have a main Widgets page, just filter that down to the individual Widget pages like a directory would do. That's how an authority site operates except their individual pages eventually take you offsite.

Spiders look for content and URLs and forms usually don't contain much in the way of either.