Do search engines follow the links in MenuMachine menus? (MM1, MM2)
Article Applies To:
MenuMachine 1 & 2
GoLive 6, CS, CS2
Mac, Windows
Article ID: 000061
Category: General Issues
Issue
Can search engines like Google follow MenuMachine links?
Solution
MenuMachine 2:
MenuMachine 2 is designed specifically with search engines in mind. MenuMachine 2 automatically creates a special site map file based on the links in the menu and links to that page using a link enclosed in <noscript> tags. This means that search engines will follow the link to the map page and from there crawl the links in the menu.
You can even base the navigation map page on a template page you create so that it has the same look and feel as the rest of your site.
See the MenuMachine 2 User Guide for more information on customizing the menu map page.
MenuMachine 2 is one of the only DHTML/JavaScript menu systems that does this, most simply present no links at all to search engines.
There is no link to the menumachine.com site inside the <noscript> tags so your search engine rankings will not be penalised.
MenuMachine 1:
MenuMachine 1 menus are created on-the-fly using JavaScript as the page is built. The links for each menu item are defined in JavaScript code, they are not <a> tags in the HTML. The JavaScript code creates the links when it builds the menu.
The links in the JavaScript code generated by MenuMachine are not readable by search engines as links. The search engines simply ignore anything between <script> tags.
While MenuMachine 1 does not automatically create code that can be indexed, there are some methods you can use to work around this.
You can use <noscript> tags in the page to surround a manually created list of links. These links will be read by search engine bots and the pages will be indexed.
Another method would be to create a simple site map page which has links to all the pages in your site. You can do this very easily in GoLive by creating a new blank page, then going to the site window, selecting the pages you want to link to and dragging them to the blank page. GoLive will automatically create links to all the pages. You can then link to this map page from your other pages with a standard <a> link, either with or without <noscript> tags around it. This method minimises the amount of effort you have to go to to update the site. Search engines will pick up the links to the map page, follow them and then index all your pages.
Last updated: July 29, 2006
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