[Sigia-l] CSS and impact on search

[Ramón Antonio Parada]

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I don't really know but best search engines apply CSS style sheets to know
the importance of any text in the page. And it does it very well and take
very much importance on that as best new websites are created using
XHTML+CSS
without bold, text size or table tags. So if you set "display: none"
perhaps
it won't be taken in account.

Sometimes user interfaces for accesing a websites are not also valid for
search engines so what I do in these case is detecting if who is accesing
the content is a spider and in this case providing optimized content.
So if you detect that there is a search engine you can provide text links
to access the contents.

Moreover this solution is safe and applicable for all search engines
because of one of them could read trought a list of options but I'm sure
not all will do so.

Please tell me what you think about this, and if you finally decide to
do it
I can help you to implement it.



Todd R.Warfel wrote:

| I've got a question on CSS/HTML and search engine placement. The
| question is regarding using CSS's display: none; as a method to
| include links in a page and whether or not that would impact the
| search engine placement (Google specifically).
|
| The scenario is a search interaction for a website that uses a
| scrolling text box to select a state w/a "next" button vs. just text
| links for the states - this is one step in the "search/filter"
| process. One of the people involved in the project believes that
| using text links for states improves their Google rank and moving to
| a drop down menu or scrolling text box will have a negative impact
| on the search results.
|
| We're considering using a hidden div to duplicate the items in the
| scrolling text box as text links. The user/customer would see the
| scrolling text box, but the search engines could see the text links
| first in the source code, then a list of <options> in the scrolling
| text box.
|
| The client is concerned that Google will somehow look at their CSS
| file to determine that we're trying to "trick" Google or Spam the
| search engine and get penalized.
|
| Two questions:
| 1) Is there any validity to their concern? I mean really, not
| hypothetically.
| 2) Does anyone know if the text links vs. <option> has an impact on
| search engine results, and if so what? Can you point me to any
| resources?
|
| Have you ever come across anything like this? Do you know where I
| can find more info about it?
|
| Cheers!
|
| Todd R. Warfel
| Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
| MessageFirst | making products easier to use
| --------------------------------------
| Contact Info
| V:         (607) 339-9640
| E:         twarfel at messagefirst.com
| W:         messagefirst.com
| AIM:         twarfel at mac.com
| --------------------------------------
| In theory, theory and practice are the same.
| In practice, they are not.
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- --
Ramón Antonio Parada
http://ramonantonio.net

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