Search Hit Less Likely with Drop Down List

[Minute Man]

I'm trying to decide between using a drop down list of product color choices or just having each item that has it's own part number show as a product.

Here is my concern. If I create a product for each color that has it's unique vendor's product numbers, there is no problem as google would find it if a customer were to google the product number. However, what happens if I do a drop down list for these items - doesn't that hide those product numbers from the google search engine? If so drop down lists may not be a good choice.

Anyone have some experience with this?

[Nadeem]

Hi there

Google normal indexes the content of the webpage, so you right, it may not index the dropdown list, however don't quote me on that . There are other users on this forum, who have a great knowledge of SEO.
What you could do is put the reference numbers within the full descriptions? Then google read the content.

Kind Regards

[NormanRouxel]

I think you'll be OK. Drop down items are plain text between <option> and </option> tags. No different really from text between (say) <b> and </b> tags, and that's certainly indexed.

The simple experiment would be to find a page that has some unique text that only appears in a drop down and see if Google finds it (assuming it's spidered the page already).

A different case would be if you had your text on the Add to Cart button. Then it would be inside a tag e.g. <input type=Submit name="Widget" value="Widget"> and I wouldn't expect a spider to look there.

[OldWelshGuy]

if it is html and contains a <href> tag, then google can follow it, and it will carry page rank with it. Gioogle can now follow links in Javascript (which many drop downs are made from) but not parse them properly, so that while it can find the link, it will not pass on the benefit of that link to the target page.

Google can also parse and understand much flash content now, but again it can not parse them properly.

The easiest way to get around it is to have a small mini site map at the foot of every page, and a dedicated sitemap page. Actinic will produce a site map page for you if you ask it nice