Are Drop down menus still bad for SEO?

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Are Drop down menus still bad for SEO?

If they ever were?

SirTalksalot

1:50 pm on Jan 12, 2009 (gmt 0)

Hi all,

In the past I was led to believe that drop down menus where not good SEO, as spiders had a problem reading them. Is this still the case? Was it ever the case?

Or is it only the case if you don't know how to set your drop down menus out correctly? If so, what are the pit-falls I should avoid?

Thank you in advance for all your help. :)

BeeDeeDubbleU

2:57 pm on Jan 12, 2009 (gmt 0)

I am not entirely sure but I think that if the URLs linked to by the drop down items are visible in the code then Google will follow them so it should not be a problem.

surrealillusions

3:02 pm on Jan 12, 2009 (gmt 0)

Generally drop down menus need javascript to make the drop down appear. If you turn javascript off, see how the page looks and thats (roughly) how the SE's will see your page. But as the previous poster stated, as long the links are in the code, then I dont see any reason why the SE's wouldn't be able to follow them.

phranque

11:49 am on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

engines are finding urls in javascript [webmasterworld.com].
in addition, it is possible to do dropdown menus without javascript [google.com] using css dropdowns [google.com].

Receptional Andy

11:51 am on Jan 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

Be aware also that drop down menus that links to all of a site's pages or categories, or to a significant volume of pages cause distortion of a site's hierarchy, and are related to what Ted called the mega menu problem [webmasterworld.com]. You don't necessarily want every link in the menu to be spidered.