Applet menu and google spiders

[NewsGuy]

I have an applet menu in one of my sites. Every page has the same menu near
the top for navigation. I am starting to get a higher ranking for the main
page and a couple other pages of the site for some keywords in google (now
that I understand better the importance of putting keywords near top of
page). However google has never indexed all 11 pages linked from the top of
my home page. The home page and a couple others have been indexed for many
months (over 6 months). Like I said it is an applet menu that I copied and
pasted into the code. It looks nice, but I'm starting to wonder if google's
spider can not navigate it. Is that a possibility with an applet type menu?

 

[David Dorward]

It looks nice, but I'm starting to wonder if google's spider can not
navigate it. Is that a possibility with an applet type menu?

Yes, processing a Java applet to try to work out what it does and if it
links to any URLs would be a _very_ expensive operation. If it isn't HTML,
then Google won't read links in it.

(For that matter, Java support in general is poor enough that I wouldn't be
happy about the proportion of the audience that using such a menu would cut
out).

 

[Travis Newbury]

Yes, processing a Java applet to try to work out what it does and if it
links to any URLs would be a _very_ expensive operation. If it isn't HTML,
then Google won't read links in it.

I thought google was now able to "spider" Flash in addition to html. Is
it just key words and not links? (or am I mistaken?)

 

[David Dorward]

I thought google was now able to "spider" Flash in addition to html.

Last I heard there was a search engine which spidered Flash, but not Google.
I could be wrong about that.

 

[Toby Inkster]

Last I heard there was a search engine which spidered Flash, but not
Google. I could be wrong about that.

Google does index Flash now, but can't follow embedded links.

 

[Travis Newbury]

Google does index Flash now, but can't follow embedded links.

Thanks all.

 

[Cynthia Turcotte]

Newsguy,

If you're 100% devoted to the notion of keeping that java applet, an
easy work-around
that would please Google (and the other search engines) would be:

a. include a sitemap with text links to each page of your site
b. include alternative text link navigation at the bottom of each page
-- if done in a smaller
font size (i.e. size 2, 10 or 11px, etc...) it's relatively unobtrusive.

Cheers!

Cynthia T.

 

[David Dorward]

Cynthia Turcotte wrote:

Please don't top post. http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?How_to_post

-- if done in a smaller
font size (i.e. size 2,

The font element (and its associated size attribute) is deprecated and
should not be used.

10 or 11px, etc...)

Font sizes specified in pixels are considered harmful.
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=FontSize