Could a HTML <select>with large numbers of <option value="<url>">'s affect my organic rankings</option></select>

[mjk26]

Hi there,

I'm currently redesigning my website, and one particular pages lists hotels in New York.  Some functionality I'm thinking of adding in is to let the user find hotels close to specific concert venues in New York.  My current thinking is to provide the following select element on the page - selecting any one of the options will automatically redirect to my page for that concert venue.  The purpose of this isn't to affect the organic traffic - I'm simply introducing this as a tool to help customers find the right hotel, but I certainly don't want it to have an adverse effect on my organic traffic.  I'd love to know your thoughts on this.  I must add that in certain cities, such as New York, there could be up to 450 different options in this select element.

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<select onchange="location=options[selectedIndex].value;">  <option value="">Show convenient hotels for:</option>    <option value="http://url1..">1492 New York</option>    <option value="http://url2..">Abrons Arts Center</option>   <option value="http://url3..">Ace of Clubs New York</option>   <option value="http://url4..">Affairs Afloat</option>   <option value="http://url5..">Affirmation Arts New York</option>   <option value="http://url6..">Al Hirschfeld Theatre</option>   <option value="http://url7..">Alice Tully Hall</option> .. .. ..</select>

Many thanks

Mike

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[CoreyNorthcutt]

Based on similar scenarios that I've observed, I wouldn't be worried about a terribly negative Google reaction to a select box.  Obviously if your rankings take a dive within 60 days of rolling this out, I'd consider backpedaling this feature.  But select box navigations aren't uncommon and it seems that Google understands them well enough at this point.

My issue would be more related to quantity; usually "normal" links on a page are best kept much lower than this, although, I also wouldn't be so sure whether Google will understand the JavaScript like a link or not.  That is, Google does crawl your JavaScript these days (source: Matt Cutts), but, sometimes Google seems to understand it, sometimes they don't (source: much first hand experience).  Also, from a UX standpoint, a select box with 450 items is really tedious.   Users hate having to do more things to get to other things (ie. scanning through a small box of 450 items that only displays 4 items at a time, not fun).  If you think that they already know the name of the concert venue, a suitable replacement could be a text box with autocomplete (if you search for prototype.js and autocomplete.js, you'll find a slick pre-written code to help with this).

If people don't already know about the concert venue they want, or if you wanted to accompany this, I'd think about some other ways to present the data.  There are lots of cool ways this could be done, some might even score you many more organic links / social mentions.  A Google Maps plotter comes to mind.  As does some creative categorization by niche (ie. blues bars vs. hipster hangout).  One more possible factor to help people talk about your site ...  "Omg I can't believe X calls Y a hipster hangout!".

As with all things web and marketing, test the crap out of whatever you do to validate, regardless of what route you decide.