GoogleBot Crawls CSS

GoogleBot Crawls CSS Files by Eric Enge at WebProNews [January 5, 2007] writes about eKstreme.com having had one CSS file requested by a GoogleBot. Each article's interesting reading.

It was inevitable. And, although it may be an experimental study, it may have future ramifications for the legitimate use of { display:none } and { display:hidden } and { text-indent: -9999px }.

It would be an impressive slieght-of-hand by Google if it parsed each and every page’s style sheet(s), wouldn’t it.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

Sean Fraser posted this on January 5, 2007 01:13 PM.

Comments

Arjan Eising wrote this at January 6, 2007 12:47 AM: You can use that kind of CSS not only for SEO traps at all. There are very good things possible with these attributes, so I hope Google won't kick me out of the listings if I use them.

Sean Fraser wrote this at January 7, 2007 08:13 AM

Arjan: I do not believe that GoogleBot will automatically blacklist anyone; blacklisting is - Usually - performed by its editors.

I believe the worst penalty GoogleBot will automatically assign to pages that use display:none - after it has mastered CSS Selectors - will be to ignore the HTML they are assigned to (which would be similar to search engines ignoring meta:keywords.)

I was more curious about the length of time it has taken Google to implement CSS use into its algorithm and how it will parse style sheets to implement spam flags. Perhaps, Google has rewritten its Bot programs to behave like browser programs.

All we can do is wait and see.

Comments are closed.

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