Will Google Follow Submission Form Links?
Search engines such as Google scan the content of Web pages to determine where the pages should appear in search results. Special programs are used to check Web pages, analyzing the text that appears on a page and following any links that are present to determine how relevant they are to the site's content.
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Google Spiders
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The programs used to scan websites and determine their search result rankings are commonly known as "Web crawlers" or "spiders" due to the way they "crawl" over Web pages to index their contents. The Google spider is known as "Googlebot" and returns results to one of several servers dedicated to the crawling and indexing of websites. The information gathered by Googlebot is used by Google's search engine algorithms to determine how relevant the contents of each page is to potential keywords, allowing Google to determine the appropriate ranking for the pages.
Crawling Procedures
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When the Googlebot spider crawls a page it collects data not only on the page's content but also on any links that connect to a page. Data on the primary page that Googlebot visits is scanned for keyword relevance, both in comparison to the page's apparent subject and to any website that links to the page. Once this preliminary scan is complete, the spider follows any links on the page to see if they land on other websites or other pages on the same site.
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Crawling Limitations
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When Googlebot follows links it does not do so indefinitely; links are typically only crawled one or two pages deep before results are returned to Google. This means that links encountered on the initial page that Googlebot visits will be followed, and links encountered on each page that is linked to may be followed as well. The spider can only follow links that do not require user interaction to follow, and will abandon any attempt to follow a link that appears to be dead or otherwise does not connect to a valid Web page.
Submission Form Links
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Though submission forms use links, these links cannot be followed by Googlebot because they generally require user interaction to activate and do not lead to a valid website or landing page. Depending on how the submission form is created, the link used to submit the information may lead directly to an email address or to a server-side program that processes the information before delivery. In either of these cases, the Google spider recognizes that the link cannot be followed and aborts any further attempt to do so.
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