Javascript Pop Up Navigation and Robots?

[peak]

Hello. My site is http://www.virtualfernie.com

I have started to rebuild the site (not yet online) using java popup navigation. I'm a little concerned... Will the search engines be able to find and follow the links to index all of my site?

Thanks in advance!

[Mel]

Hi Peak, you are right to be concerned since spiders mostly do not read javascript yet and cannot follow the links or give you ranking credit for them.

You can use other technologies which the search engines can read to get the same effect (take a look at the free tools at projectseven.com for menu building especially Autolayers which is a Dreamweaver plugin) or you can put a list of text links across the bottom of the page for the spiders.

[minstrel]

or you can use the technique that many sites use, which is to use the jscript menus to make your page pretty and optimized for your clients, and then down at the bottom of the page put a row or two of small font text links to your main pages - make sure one of these is to a site map, which contains ALL text links to ALL of the pages on your website, if possible - don't put more than 100 links on your sitemap page though - if need be, use one of the 100 links to link to a second page.

[awall19]

using noscript tags with your java has worked well for many people too...

[greeneagle]

Another method to accomplish "pretty", Site color match, visitor interactivity... that I use is CSS with the text links to change mouseover colors etc...
Ken

[Mel]

Hi Awall

My bad...clean forgot about the noscript tag, maybe because I like to get the menu right the first time, and not have to add extra code just for the search engines, but you are absolutely correct the noscript tag works just fine too, as does the noemed tag for Flash.