Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • My Q&A
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. If a website Uses <select>to dropdown some choices, will Google see every option as Content Or Hyperlink?</select>

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    If a website Uses <select>to dropdown some choices, will Google see every option as Content Or Hyperlink?</select>

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    4
    2177
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Zanox
      Zanox last edited by

      If a website Uses <select>  to dropdown some choices, will Google see every option as Content Or Hyperlink?</select>

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • evolvingSEO
        evolvingSEO @Zanox last edited by

        Hi Wesley

        They won't see it as a normal link, but Google will try to probably crawl and process them, it just would take longer to do so. If you really want to prevent Google from crawling a link, use the rel=nofollow attribute like this on the link itself;

        sign in

        Reference here

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Zanox
          Zanox last edited by

          Hi Dan,

          Thanks voor your reply but in this case I don't want that the crawler sees the <select>dropdown as a numeration of links. Do you thing Google will see the drop down choices as hyperlinks? Cheers, Wesley</select>

          evolvingSEO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • evolvingSEO
            evolvingSEO last edited by

            I would generally stick with <a>links if you want to ensure web crawlers can crawl the links. Its possible they may be able to process <select>and crawl through to those pages, but I'd suspect it may be slower and less reliable than a normal anchor link.</select></a>

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • Ty1986

              The main navigation is using JS, will this have a negative impact on SEO?

              Hi mozzers, We just redesigned our homepage and discovered that our main nav is using JS and when disabling JS, no main nav links was showing up. Is this still considered bad practice for SEO? https://cl.ly/14ccf2509478 thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty1986
              1
            • ds9.tech

              Ogranization Schema/Microformat for a content/brand website | Travel

              Hi, One of our clients have a website specific to a place, for eg. California Tourism in which they publish local information related to tourism, blogs & other useful content. I want to understand how useful is to publish Organization Schema on such website mentioning the actual Organization, which in this case is a Travel Agency? Or any other schema would fit in for such websites?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ds9.tech
              0
            • TaylorRHawkins

              How to stagger <h>tags?</h>

              This might seem like a silly question, but It's one that I would like to get some responses from the SEO community. Do <h>tags need to be staggered according to the numbers? For example: A few of our clients have their h1 tag listed on a mid-way header that is halfway down their page, and there are both h2's and h3's listed before the h1 in the source code. Does this matter? Let me know! 
              Thanks! </h>

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TaylorRHawkins
              2
            • jlo7613

              Can Google read content that is hidden under a "Read More" area?

              For example, when a person first lands on a given page, they see a collapsed paragraph but if they want to gather more information they press the "read more" and it expands to reveal the full paragraph. Does Google crawl the full paragraph or just the shortened version? In the same vein, what if you have a text box that contains three different tabs. For example, you're selling a product that has a text box with overview, instructions & ingredients tabs all housed under the same URL. Does Google crawl all three tabs? Thanks for your insight!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlo7613
              0
            • CFCU

              Having 2 brands with the same content - will this work from an SEO perspective

              Hi All, I would love if someone could help and provide some insights on this.  We're a financial institution and have a set of products that we offer. We have recently joined with another brand and will now be offering all our products to their customers. What we are looking to do is have 1 site that masks the content for both sites so it appears as there are 2 seperate brands with different content - in fact we have a main site and then a sister brand that offers the same products. Is there anyway to do this so when someone searches for Credit Card from Brand A it is indexed under Brand A and same when someone searched for Credit Card from Brand B it is indexed under Brand B. The one thing is we would not want to rel:can the pages nor be penalised by googles latest PR algorithm. Hope someone can help! Thanks Dave

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFCU
              1
            • ParkerSoftware

              Will the use of lightbox affect SEO?

              I am looking to condense a features list on my pricing page. it is currently a static list however I want the user to click a button and a full list of standard features will pop up in a lightbox. How will this affect my SEO? Can Google read content in a lightbox?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParkerSoftware
              0
            • friendoffood

              Google crawling different content--ever ok?

              Here are a couple of scenarios I'm encountering where Google will crawl different content than my users on initial visit to the site--and which I think should be ok.  Of course, it is normally NOT ok,  I'm here to find out if Google is flexible enough to allow these situations: 1. My mobile friendly site has users select a city, and then it displays the location options div which includes an explanation for why they may want to have the program use their gps location.  The user must choose the gps, the entire city, or he can enter a zip code, or choose a suburb of the city, which then goes to the link chosen.  OTOH it is programmed so that if it is a Google bot it doesn't get just a meaningless 'choose further' page, but rather the crawler sees the page of results for the entire city (as you would expect from the url),   So basically the program defaults for the entire city results for google bot, but for for the user it first gives him the initial ability to choose gps. 2. A user comes to mysite.com/gps-loc/city/results   The site, seeing the literal words 'gps-loc' in the url goes out and fetches the gps for his location and returns results dependent on his location.   If Googlebot comes to that url then there is no way the program will return the same results because the program wouldn't be able to get the same long latitude as that user. So, what do you think?  Are these scenarios a concern for getting penalized by Google? Thanks, Ted

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood
              0
            • Omnipress

              Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?

              I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
              http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy