However, it is only for a small number of 'high quality sites'
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/solved-another-common-site-review-problem/
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I was under the impression that they always did???
I mean, as long as the dropdown takes you somewhere??
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* Miss UNIVERSE, previously known as Search-Engines-Web.com? |
another way to pollute the index.. think of a nice legit looking site with the drop downs being sent to a host of urls that a hosts spam type of porn sites..
"it’s less about crawling search results and more about discovering new links."
likewise its good tool for SEO/SEM to "abuse" this feature too.. |
<< I mean, as long as the dropdown takes you somewhere?? >>
That's more of a JS issue, rather than a form. You could use an onchange to make the drop-down menu do something once it has been selected. |
Google understands JavaScript since many years ago. Googlebot is able to read URL, even exploded in different variables, in javascript code. Many studies have shown that.
Submitting forms is just the following step. |
I thought they were already doing this. When you search for some terms, you find spammy results. Say... "wav encoder". You get many results. One of the first I get is from a page called brothersoft. http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/8018/spammtx6.jpg If you look, it says "Software Search For wav encoder" I've seen results like this since a lot of time. Off-Topic: I tried (but failed) to do a custom search avoiding this kind of sites (like softpedia and other sites I really hate). If someone has ideas to create something like this, please tell me! |
Zim, it could be spam, or then again, it could be someone just doing a direct link to the search results page that are not robot excluded. |
There is a lot of data hidden behind query forms. For example the addresses of UK train stations, time tables and other such stuff. |
<<it could be someone just doing a direct link to the search results page>>
Look at the links from the top of the Brothersoft page and the list of related searches. |
Google is only crawling "GET" forms. That makes sense. A "GET" form is likely to lead to an indexable page, whereas a "POST" form is likely to be carrying out some action before displaying the results of that action.
On the other hand, if a site publishes a sitemap, there should be no reason for Google to submit forms, because the sitemap should lead to all the pages that the site wants crawled. |
> Google understands JavaScript since many years ago.
Thanks Tom for the correction. I updated the article. |