Articles without menu links

Are articles of any value if there are no direct links?

[masterwebman]

I recently was asked to optimize a site which had lots of article pages but zero links to them. Somebody told them they should have articles. The site is badly in nead of optimization and doesn't have a menu which links to the articles or any links on pages linking to the articles. Are they getting any benefit in Google for the articles as they are currently? I plan on adding a menu, but I am curious.

[jimbeetle]

If an article exists but nobody knows it's there, does it really exist? Not really. So no, if there aren't any links to or from the articles they aren't doing any good at all. If they're good articles and you get them well integrated into the site with proper navigation they might be able to serve as good spider bait.