Does ViewState affect SEO Rankings

[SEO-Team]

We are redesigning our website and looking at our large data in the viewstate hidden field. Our thoughts are to move to bottom of page but our developers are stating this is an old myth and no resent documentation if it improves our SEO.

1. Does ViewState (big data in hidden fields ) effect SEO in any way?

2. If ViewState (hidden field) is present at the end of HTML document instead of near the start of HTML document then will it increase our ranking in search engines?

3. Does Google or any other engine read the hidden fields? or do they ignore them?

4. Can you point me to some valid documentation to back this up?

Feed back is appreciated.

Cathy

[GeorgeDavis]

Although I wasn't able to find a concrete answer for you, It seems the general consensus is that moving ViewState to the bottom of the page can ensure a larger portion of your relevant content gets indexed, as well as improve the user experience by slightly improving page load time.

Here we're some of the more helpful discussions I found :

Moving ViewState to Improve ASP.NET SEO

Moving ViewState for Better SEO

ASP.NET HttpModule for Moving ViewState to Bottom

I have never heard of any of these guys and cannot vouch for their knowledge.  Sorry I could not be of more help, best of luck!