Drop Down Menus and Crawlability

[Colbys]

Hello,

We are working on a complete site redesign.  One of the mock-ups that are being reviewed is of a page that encompasses and entire category of products, but the only way the user can see the products is to fill out several drop down menus, and then a subset of products that match that criteria will appear.

Once that list appears, the user will then be able to click on each of the products and will then be taken to the product page.

I'm concerned that this layout will pose a crawlability issue since click activity and drop down menus have always been a problem for bots in the past, has anything changed?  Will the bot be able to follow the links to these product pages if it can't see them since it can't fill out the form?

Also, depending on the functionality of this 'form', I'm assuming the product listing will be populated dynamically and pulled from another source, which means that the product links will not live in the html of the page, and hence cannot be crawled.  Does anyone know how this is normally handled?  Do the actual results usually live elsewhere or does it live in the html of that page?

Any thoughts or clarity around this would be appreciated.

[JaneCopland]

"But if they are already in the html, would that be considered cloaking?"

There are times when presenting something in HTML that is otherwise not visible, but having other features on the page that allow people to read / click / access that content in other ways, is fine. Linking is a tricky because links are so inherently valuable in terms of SEO. You don't can't really be too careful.

I'd be wary of presenting links (a subset or full set) in HTML if there is a form process to actually arrive at the links' targets. Essentially you'll be linking to products X, Y and Z on a page, for search engines but requiring a specific input from a user to see X, Y or Z - an input that only very few overall visitors are actually likely to make. I would say this qualifies as showing different content for SEO's sake and not providing a UX alternative that is pretty much the same thing. Others may disagree with me on that - I'm being wary here

I would very much like to see the HTML if you are still active in this thread when it is produced, but you may be left with a situation where the pages need to be linked to elsewhere throughout the site to ensure they are crawled.

[Colbys]

Thanks, Jane.  I don't have the raw html because only a static design has been produced at this point.

I'm not sure I want the form filled out by the bots, I just want to make sure that the links that are the end result of filling out the form are crawlable because that will be the only path to the product pages.  I've been speaking with IT to figure out if the links will already be in the html even if they are not displayed on the page, or if the links are dynamically generated from another location, which means they will not be crawlable.  They are not sure yet.  But if they are already in the html, would that be considered cloaking?  Since the user cannot see them until they fill out the form?  And even then they will only see a small subset of the links.

My other concern for this page is that we are taking our largest parent category and putting ALL of the products on one page - you just can't get to them until you fill out the form.  My worry is that this page will be way to broad, this parent category is normally made up of several subcategories.  I don't think we will rank well for some long tail terms because there is going to be so much broad content on the page pertaining to so many different types of products.

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Kelli,

From what you have described here, I don't think this will easily be crawled. Obviously the necessary code for the click activity is included in the HTML, and whilst Google has been known to complete forms and take actions on sites before, it's far from guaranteed that it will do this.

Usually when Google completes actions like this, it's not desirable - you used to see websites with millions of junk URLs indexed because Google had either "filled out forms" itself, or spammers had dynamically generated millions of versions of a form to fill Google's index, in order to harm a competitor. It's not common to want Google to complete activity like this, rather than just let it crawl the information deliberately given to it in HTML.

I would be really curious to see what the menus looked like in HTML though. That would give us a better idea of whether it's likely Google will crawl any of the content.

If the menus are not crawlable, there are range of other good options (that can also be user-friendly and attractive) for menu development. The Distilled guide is a good resource.

If we are I am able to look at the raw HTML for the planned menus, please let me know. If you'd rather not post it in here, feel free to PM me (I am not a Moz staff member - I used to be - but I act as an associate contractor for the company) or email jane.copland@gmail.com.

Cheers,

Jane

[Colbys]

Thanks Evan.  Please keep in mind, this is not the navigation, it is essentially a form on a page that dynamically generates a list of product page links.  My question is that I want to know if those products cannot be viewed until the form is filled out, how can the bots see them.

This form will require click activity to fill out, not just hovering over it.  And I don't just want the dropdowns to be crawled, the dropdown items themselves are not links, they are just decisions that the user has to make in order to see matching products.

Even if the bot could fill out the form, it is only going to display a small subset of product links.  If this is the only page that will have links to all of our products in a particular category, I want to make sure that all of those product pages will get crawled.  So I was wondering if all of the product links will still be see by the bots even though the user will not be able to see them.

[evan89]

hey Kelli,

i'm not entirely sure what the mock-up design is like, but I have used dropdown me us in the past, and as long as they are in html, bots should be able to crawl. I have found this article helpful on the past.: https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/site-navigation-for-seo/

Hopefully  this is helpful.

[Colbys]

Thanks, but I cannot fetch as googlebot because the page is not live yet, we are wireframing the design first.

[WilliamKammer]

A simple way to see how Google sees your page is to use the "Fetch as Googlebot" function in Google Webmasters. This way you can see if there is anything not being crawled. The more traditional way to do this set up would be to have a search bar above the fold, and then have category pages people can click through to browse if they want. Messy drop-downs are never fun.

Let me know if that helps.