I am in the process of setting up a web services network, and I am looking to install a network bar similar to the one at the top of this page (for the IMDT.biz network).

My question is this: does Google pick up links that are used in dropdown SELECT boxes through JavaScript? The main purpose of this network will be to give an overall PageRank boost to my web properties, but I want to make sure that these links will be properly recognized.

No, search engines do not execute javascript or submit forms. So they will be unable to follow the links in the dropdowns.

Thanks for the input; I thought this was the case, but just wanted to double-check myself.

What would you recommend as an alternative to using dropdown menus?

I like CSS style navigations.

Check http://css.maxdesign.com.au/ , if you have the inclination.

nice link vivekar

Nice reference site... I just hope I can compress ten or so links into that.

My goal is this:

Have a single-line bar running across an 800 x 600 resolution that contains the following text:

"DevelopedWeb Network Web Design Website Templates Logo Templates eBook Library Free Fonts Legal Forms Search Engine Submission Web Hosting Domain Registration Design Articles & Tutorials"

I think fitting this text on one line across a page is pretty much impossible, so I would like to use dropdown menus. However, it is very important to me that these links all get picked up easily by search engines, as I want my sites to promote one another.

Any more ideas?

If your interested in sitewide links I would read this thread from SEO Chat - Jo Bob's Bloop theory

Originally Posted by Jamesanderson

If your interested in sitewide links I would read this thread from SEO Chat - Jo Bob's Bloop theory

That was an interesting little discussion. Personally, I disagree with Jo Bob's theory for the most part, and judging by some of the things he was saying (or not saying after people challenged him), I would take it with a grain of salt.

Sitewide links do have their ups and downs in terms of their effects on ranking position--and it really depends on what the overall effect is that you're going for. Since I'm looking to promote mostly just the index pages on each of these sites, I'd rather put a drain on the others by having each of them link to the indexes of the main sites, thus slightly raising the PR of each index page at the cost of some PR from the subpages.

Originally Posted by DevelopedWeb

Nice reference site... I just hope I can compress ten or so links into that.

My goal is this:

Have a single-line bar running across an 800 x 600 resolution that contains the following text:

"DevelopedWeb Network Web Design Website Templates Logo Templates eBook Library Free Fonts Legal Forms Search Engine Submission Web Hosting Domain Registration Design Articles & Tutorials"

I think fitting this text on one line across a page is pretty much impossible, so I would like to use dropdown menus. However, it is very important to me that these links all get picked up easily by search engines, as I want my sites to promote one another.

Any more ideas?

I reviewed your site and my suggestion is...You can provide vertical navigation bar...one column and multiple rows.... because the lots of blank space are found in your site at left side...after portfolio. So you can use that space to provide navigation bar without the use of dropdown menu...

Thanks, rasesh.patel. That's a good suggestion, but not all of the sites on the network are going to have that same type of layout. Some of the other sites include NeedFonts, AtomicSubmit, and Online-Web-Design-Course.com. Not all of these would be able to contain a vertical nav bar. This is why I'd prefer to go with a horizontal navbar. But as we've seen, fitting all the text is a problem.

That's a good idea, though... if it comes down to it, I may have to go with a vertical bar and redo some of the site layouts.

Add a line of small images on each page, hyperlink each image to the site your targeting, add your targeted keywords to the title tage of each image.

This will let you have all the links with a minium of disruption and still allow each link to have targeted anchor text.

This solution would not offer a good click through rate as the images would not be obvious links but it would still pass PR to each site.

Hope this helps.

I have an idea:
use your javascript drop down but also have a div with all your links in it set to display : none;
so people wont see it but google will.

Thanks for all the advice; it's much appreciated.

Nick89, does Google penalize for hidden DIVs? I noticed in some of their Terms of Service that they strongly discourage using hidden layers to post links on your website. I hope this does not cause my websites to get penalized (as I have heard elsewhere that it may), because I already use hidden DIVs for navigation menus on some of my websites (http://www.medmaninst.com, http://www.zionhillmortuary.com, etc.).

This would be a great way to go about it, if there are no negative repercussions from Google for doing so.

Jamesanderson, this is another idea I've been passing around. I'm probably going to make a graphical version either way, just to see how it looks.

Check out the current version of the navbar at http://www.developedweb.com/dwvmp/networkbar3.html, and let me know what you think! It should fit on 800 x 600 resolution (although I made it today and haven't yet tested it).

Hi Nick89,

You're right that G won't find it programmatically. But competition will find it and report it to Google.
So the rankings would go down, sooner.

Sometimes, Success of Google is attributed to the people contributing to Google. That's why it's "Peoples' Search Engine".

hmm well you could test to see if it is a crawler visiting when it enter's and if so display links else, display dropdown menu.

Check out the current version of the navbar at http://www.developedweb.com/dwvmp/networkbar3.html, and let me know what you think! It should fit on 800 x 600 resolution (although I made it today and haven't yet tested it).

just so you know this does not render well in my safari browser.

Working in both IE6.0 AND Netscape 7.0 But in Netscape the forum link is not in the same line

Nick89, that's quite an original idea! What do you think would be the best way to test it? Do you think having something like this would work:

<SCRIPT language="Javascript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
document.write(--DROPDOWN MENUS HERE--);
//-->
</SCRIPT>
<NOSCRIPT>
--TEXTUAL MENU HERE--
(ie--the one currently online at http://www.developedweb.com/dwvmp/networkbar3.html) 
</NOSCRIPT>

?

This is assuming that Googlebot and other crawlers not only ignore Javascript, but that they can't pick it up (thus the NOSCRIPT tag would kick in). Is this the case?

Monkey and Sharpnose, thanks for the input--I'll modify it later and re-post a link so you all can check it out again. Monkey, could you take a snapshot in Safari? That's the one browser I don't have at home or my office (although I haven't yet tested it in Opera or Netscape).

To keep the bots happy i would use server side scripting and plus competitors will find it very hard to work it out. I will work on a bit of php code for you.

Thanks, nick89...

I believe this might all not be a problem anymore, since I got the text to (miraculously) fit on a single bar (http://www.developedweb.com/dwvmp/networkbar10.html). I would still like to have a PHP version, though, to implement once the network expands.