Do search engines read help/info popups?

[Neticus]

Hi

Was reading up on SEO when this thought occured to me...

Do search engines read optional quick info/help popups?

e.g.
If a user is prompted to 'click here for quick info' this opening a pop up of how 'x' works.

Do search engines read this?

Its just so i know whether its makes a difference putting keywords/phrases in..


Any feedback appreciated.
Thanks.

[Neticus]

Originally posted this on the 17th of Feb,
tis' now the 22nd of Feb.

Rejected on my first post!..no matter, I know jesus loves me!

If anyones humble enough to answer this question then please do. A simple yes or no will brighten my way..

Many thanks,

Neticus

[mike]

I'm going to say 'no'.

...but that's just a (quasi-educated) guess.

[cbp]

If a user is prompted to 'click here for quick info' this opening a pop up of how 'x' works.

I would say yes, as this is just like following a link to another page.

BTW - thats not a true 'pop-up' - maybe people did not read your message as the subject line said 'pop up' - no one likes them .... if you were talking about a true popup, I would not worry about search engines reading them, I would be more worried about visitors reading or blocking them.

CBP

[Conficio]

Hi there,
the ability to judge that would be vastly improved, if you give us an example or tell us how you call the "Pop-Up".

In general, Google did not do much with JavaScript for a long time. In the mean time they try to scan JavaScript for anything that looks like a URL and try to follow it. I have seen it in my logs that they try to follow a particular script that calls an external counter. They way they apply it fails as 404, but they give it a try.

Does that mean they do interpret JavaScript directly? No! Otherwise they would be able to follow the counter script correctly. But they take an educated guess.

So it heavily depends on what technology you use to call your pop-up windows.

Give us a link to your website and I'd be happy to look into it and make a better informed judgment. Ultimately, post some unique test on some pop-up windows and see what each SE does with it.

K<o>

[deltatrend]

Neticus,

To be safe, I sometimes use a text-only browser (http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html). I figure if a page can't be found with it, it is unlikely to be found by a spider.

[Faglork]

Just use a simple CCS popup (i.e. does not use javascript), and it will work with all spiders.
See
http://www.schnaps-brennerei.com/
for an example.

Move your mouse over the left-side navigation links.

Of course, if you want longer explanations with the ability to print them, I would simply use normal pages to link to.

Alex

[Neticus]

Mike - thanks

CBP - I see what u mean about the subjuect line. thanks for info.

Conficio, hey - Its a help window called up via Javascript. Thanks!

Delatrend - thanks for the text only browser link, great resource.

Faglork - CCS pop box ay? definatley a productive option if its read by most spiders. Say, I may add this function to the logo - when hovered a description of the website with keywords to show. I read spiders crawl sites from top to bottom, so perhaps to have a CCS info box at the top logo may be a bonus..may be wrong, just thinking out loud!

Thanks all.

[suesheboy]

Originally Posted by Neticus

CBP I read spiders crawl sites from top to bottom, so perhaps to have a CCS info box at the top logo may be a bonus

It would be.

I alt tag my images and text tage somr of my links but I love the way the css looks and firefox does not show alt tags on mouseovers yet.

What was the code on the CCS side needed to show that?

[suesheboy]

Originally Posted by Neticus

CBP I read spiders crawl sites from top to bottom, so perhaps to have a CCS info box at the top logo may be a bonus

It would be.

I alt tag my images and text tage somr of my links but I love the way the css looks and firefox does not show alt tags on mouseovers yet.

What was the code on the CCS side needed to show that?

[Faglork]

I think I got it from Eric Meyer's CSS EDGE
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/popups/demo.html
(great other stuff there, btw!)

As for FF "not showing ALT tags on mouseovers yet":
It never will. The ALT tag is not supposed to be shown on mouseover, it is IE which got the specs wrong. Use additional TITLE tags, and you will have those nice tooltips in FF (and other compliant browsers, too). If present, IE will show TITLE instead of ALT.

In general: ALT is supposed to facilitate navigation/orientation when you use a text-oriented browser or have graghics switched off. TITLE is for sort of "description" and can be used for a number of tags. See w3c specs on that.

Alex

[suesheboy]

Thanks faglork, that's a great resource.

I started to teach myself CSS, but I ned to dive back in as there is so much more I can do with it.

[Faglork]

If you don't know it already, visit
http://www.alistapart.com/


My favorite:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors/

this just shows the potential which lies in CSS.

Alex