Does Google follow links in "id" tag?

[Hakkasan]

Hello,

For functionality purposes, I need to wrap separate blocks of content with a tag. The main question is whether Google will follow this URL, even though it is not a hyperlink on the page, just a URL used for functionality purposes.

We will have 10-20 of these types of span tags with a different URL for each one, and we just want to be sure that Google will not be following these URLs that are not links.

Thanks!

[ShaMenz]

Hi Dylan,

All evidence is that if the URL is not wrapped in an <a href="">tag, then it won't be crawled.</a>

<a href=""></a>

<a href="">Matt Cutts has discussed this and not surprisingly suggested that it would not be a good thing if these URL's were crawlable. If that happened it would be open slather on adding your link to any user generated content such as forums, comments etc. You can view the video here</a> Will Google use non-link references?

There is a post from SEOmofo that suggests in certain circumstances, google may accidentally make links crawlable if it strips out <text area="">code, but once again, the URL's in his demonstration are actually wrapped in the a href tag. You can find the post here</text>

So, as far as I am aware, there is no evidence that URL's wrapped in a SPAN tag would be crawled - but as you will see, Matt emphasises that Google doesn't like to ever take anything "off the table".

Hope that helps,

Sha