3 replies to this topic

[SERPico]

So i am planning to use a menu like this one on a site:

CODE

<form name="menuform">
<select name="menu2"
onChange="top.location.href = this.form.menu2.options[this.form.menu2.selectedIndex].value;
return false;">
<option>Choose...</option>
<option
value="http://www.domain.com/page-1.html">Page 1</option>
<option
value="http://www.domain.com/page-2.html">Page 2</option>
<option
value="http://www.domain.com/page-3.html">Page 3</option>
<option
value="http://www.domain.com/page-4.html">Page 4</option>
<option
value="http://www.domain.com/page-5.html">Page 5</option>
</select>
</form>

Would Google follow the links in this menu?
Or can't Google crawl these type of links?

I would like to stop Google from following the links in the code, if Google does follow the links in the above code, how do i add a nofollow?

I'm sorry for mixing in a coding question as well guys, but i am not that much of a coder so if you can drop some example code how to do this, i would really appreciate it!

Thanks!

[Jill]

No, they don't follow form options, last I checked.

[SERPico]

Thanks Jill!

[Randy]

They may however see the URLs in those forms as plain text that is actually a url address. You sometimes see text from a form showing up in a snippet in a search, meaning they at least see it.

I've not tested it in awhile, but when I last did they didn't appear follow any urls they found in a form. I assume they're still not doing that for <option>'s, but it might be wise to test it just in case. I'm pretty sure they'll never follow a url they see in a form action, because they their spider would be trying to buy stuff on every shopping cart out there. However it wouldn't be that hard for them to make the distinction between a form action and an <option> if they felt like it.

Better safe than sorry if it's important. If so I'd set up a quick and dirty test to see if things are still the way they've always been.