Google and Drop-down Menus

[vano]

Hello,

Recently I came up to one interesting question:
What google thinks about drop-down menus, those CSS based ones?

Let me explain:

e.g. I want to add the following drop-down menu to my site:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/chrome/index.htm

it is CSS based menu and uses hidden div's to store menu elements. Those elements seems to be indexable, but they are hidden, so might be considered as black seo.

So the question: Do you think google can consider such drop-down menu to be spam and thus ban the site?

I am even more interested in facts, rather than opinions. Say, do you have sites with such menus that rank high in google? or maybe your sites were banned due to using such menus?

Thanks,

-Vano

[milonic]

Hi,

I doubt if Google would see the hidden DIVS as spammy but may not put as much weight into their content because they are hidden. Certainly shouldn't be against their TOS.

What I can suggest is if you use a JavaScript menu you are well within your rights to publish a second menu inside a <NOSCRIPT> tag. In this instance you will get the coverage you need for user navigation and the search engines can crawl your site. Have a look at the source for our site: http://www.milonic.com/ to see how we do it. Also, view our site with JavaScript on and off to see how it all works.

Hope this helps,
Andy

[KeithO]

i use hidden divs for drop down menus all the time and have never had an issue getting full inclusion.

[Mel]

You may be interested in this thread, http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=57731&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 it appears that all dynamic menus using hidden divs may not be treated in the same way