Is the text in form boxes indexed?

Forum Moderators: phranque

Message Too Old, No Replies

Is the text in form boxes indexed?

Text between type="text" value=" is it indexed

bouncybunny

9:30 am on Jul 1, 2009 (gmt 0)

A bit of an oddball question, but does anyone know if 'initial value' text in form boxes is indexed by the main SE spiders?

For example

<input name="search" type="text" value="Enter text here to search our special category" />

tomhumf

3:21 pm on Jul 1, 2009 (gmt 0)

I'm guessing if it is indexed at all, it will carry far less weight than text in paragraph, heading, and other tags.

walf_man

8:26 am on Jul 2, 2009 (gmt 0)

i think it will not be indexed.

bouncybunny

4:22 pm on Jul 3, 2009 (gmt 0)

Thanks.

I'm less interested in how much weight it carries. I'm more concerned that, on pages with little text, that it may throw off SERPs or affect adsense, for example.

kaled

7:42 pm on Jul 3, 2009 (gmt 0)

I believe that <textarea> objects are indexed so I would expect the contents of other input types to be indexed. I think the contents of <select> objects are also indexed, but I haven't checked for many years.

However, indexing <textarea> and <select> objects is automatic by virtue of html structure, whilst indexation of <input> objects would require some effort, so I could be wrong.

Kaled.