DHTML Menu /Javascript effects on bots ability to spider.

I started thinking about this a little bit ago when I was creating some redirect pages for some outdated pages that are no longer available but still show up on search engine results and many people probably have some of the older pages bookmarked.

I'm using a DHTML menu, which is basically two javascripts. One stores the functions that make the menu work and the other stores the href data. Typically I'll use the meta tag to instruct robots to index,follow, but I started thinking - how will they be able to "follow" when I have no links on the page itself to follow? Will they extract the links from the javascript file? I'm thinking probably not.

Because of the complexity of the site, I have no text links on the page, but use the one menu, since an easy edit to the js file changes the menu for the entire site. I also don't have a site map page, but now I'm thinking that might not be such a bad idea.

Thanks for any advice.

I did find somewhat of an answer and solution to this. Apparently the answer is no, they will not index the links in the external .js files so without any actual hypertext links on the site, they won't spider past the index page. I discovered this when indexing my site with a search proggie I found called ZoomSearch, and testing it with some online search optimization stuff.

The temporary solution was to put all the links to every page to the site in SGML comments in the head examlple--



Now that that's temporarily solved it gives me more time to create a better design.

Google does NOT execute java script or HTML it only reads.

It reads a href as a link but does not know to ignore it cos it don’t execute the surroundings like Java Script. I am not sure but it may not even execute <!-- -->

Google does not parse comment tags at all due to abuse in SEO some 2 years back. Those links wont be spidered in the head you will need to find and text or image link alternative or simply integrate a text link based site map from the footer of each page, this is suggested in Googles suggestions for webmasters as well.

No matter what design you have "sitemap" link in the footer is always integratable

Thats a well nice website you have seo-guy.com PR8 too
- May I say .. consider changing the font to verdana apart from the massive text "Contact SEO Guy today!" to be in Ariel. (Trust me!)

Thanks for the input folks. My intent is to redo the site anyway, but I needed to figure out some solutions for the DHTML menu stuff. Much appreciated.

ITsa ll Good Johan thanks for the props but I am redesigning completely with unflux right now jsut wait a week or 2 and that PR 8 site will do itrself justice
Cheers

indeed -- and verdana is always my font of choice

What about sniffing the user-agent and substituting a sitemap for the bots.

(I've heard some bots may notice this and will do mean things to your ranking... but, its just a rumor. Does anyone know for sure?)

That kind of cloaking is usually not picked up by Google but if you are reported via the spam report your gone!