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.

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.

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

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.