search engines and css

Ok first question, does anyone know if search engines have any appreciation of CSS. Ie, will the links in a dhtml menu (that start off hidden) be ignored by crawlers in case its a spamming method (adding loads of links for the SE but not for the visitors), or will they ignore the fact that its hidden or do they completely ignore css.

The application of this would be:


keyword, in a bold tag, but not displaying bold to the viewer.

I'm just wondering what the SE do about stuff like that?

Is this the kind of menu your talking about?
http://www.printingyoucantrust.com

If you are, the spider was able to go right through.

Fair enough, thats handy to know. What about those bold tags? This could be handy for "pointing out" my keywords without having bold text all over the place (which can look a bit nasty/tacky at times). I just wonder if google sees it as spamming....

I am not quite sure. I doubt it would throw that big of a red flag up. There are spammers out there doing a whole h*** of alot more and not being penalized.

until they get caught! I'd just rather keep out of anything google thinks is slightly spam-like. Well I'm off to write a search and replace to wrap all my keywords in hidden bold tags

Thanks for the help vetofunk

No problem

You can try to hide and do all kinds of neat stuff with javascript and CSS to fool the spiders but SEs don't like it . . . it's like trying to manipulate the results.

Well its not as though I am trying to feed them content that is not there for the normal public. Is this really so bad and is it any worse than putting all your keywords in bold tags anyway. Doesn't change the content of the site but still boosts your rankings....

I don't think its that bad. If it's really what your site is about, then it's fair enough, but the SE _do_ say that whatever you don't do for your users and do only for the benefit of the SE is considered spam.

So if you feel like there's no real way for you to justify it, then if it gets reported a SE might do something about it, but I would still say that's a pretty minor issue on their list right now...

In respince to your fist post (i only skimed the thred) search engins ony scan the content of the page. It will not know if it is visible or not.

Problem is, any kind of optimisation is done for the sake of SE. You don't spend time researching keywords and carefully weaving them into your content for the users. You don't wrap keywords in bold or italics just for the users - people doing that just on their keywords are only doing it for the SE. The words you emphasise for a user are diferent to those that you emphasise for the SE.

Most peoples' title tags are written with keywords on them, if you were writing for a user then company name would probably be the first thing, but thats not good for a search engine (unless you are sony), so people don't.

Ah well, I will comtemplate and decide over time how much of a risk it is....