Do dropdowns count as unique content?

[TheDude]

My current site has some extensive unique database content by "widget" type.  Currently we display this info into HTML 's, but we are considering utilizing this data in a dropdown field on each respective widget page.

I want to ensure we don't have thin content...Does the content within the <option>tags on a dropdown count towards unique content?</option>

[dpdeleon1]

If you can view the code when using a "view source" or similar then the code can be crawled. That being said I don't think an option button would be considered content by a search engine so it wouldn't be unique.

[TheDude]

I was thinking the same...Therefore I am considering populating both my dropdown and a data like my current site to ensure unique content is not too thin and I get long tail searches on some of the more unique product listings.

[RuthBurrReedy]

I'm having a hard time picturing what you're describing - do you have an example URL I could take a look at?

[TheDude]

Not yet.  We are still designing wireframes.

I am wondering if the data in a combobox like below would count as unique data:

http://miamicoder.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/image_12.png (possible new display)

We currently have our data displayed in HTML <tables>that I don't believe to be as user friendly, but do count as unique content.</tables>

http://www.learn-html-tutorial.com/Images/FormattedTable.gif

(assuming the data is the same in both pics above)

[RuthBurrReedy]

From everything you're saying, it looks like search engines will be able to crawl the content either way (as long as you make sure the dropdowns are using search-engine-friendly code like HTML or CSS and not JavaScript or Ajax # tags).

Once the site launches, you can double-check that the content's being indexed by doing a site: query in Google that contains a large chunk of the text contained in the dropdown.

[TheDude]

This is good advice for checking to see if it counts at all, but I guess there is no way to definitively know whether date in a table trumps a dropdown without A/B testing.

[RuthBurrReedy]

As long as the search engines can crawl it, I doubt that one format would cause your content to be considered "more unique" than the other - it either is unique or it isn't, and the content itself is the same either way.  Since it seems like the drop-down is a more user-friendly solution, that's what I'd do.

If you're concerned that your content won't be robust enough to rank for a term, I'd consider adding some additional, relevant text that contains the keywords you're targeting rather than trying to tweak the format of the same text - maybe via a blog post?  But if you are finding your content to be unique enough now, in the tables, without adding extra text then I don't think switching it to be in a drop-down is going to wreck that.