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I'd suggest checking that any jquery solution hides stuff with display:none after the page has loaded. Essentially is the content/menu fully visible when you turn javascript off and load the page? (regardless of how horrific the display looks?) Bear in mind that Google also advises against things like display:none for implementation of things like microformats.

Hey Zachary! It's a good idea to use pure css menus when the design and functionality are the same as using a menu with javascript AND the actual menu items are in a clean html list (not delivered through the JS). But keep in mind that cross-browser functionality can be an issue with pure css menus. Internet Explorer is a real problem in this regard. As for SEO, I doubt inline javascript that adds functionality to a clean html list will make search engines burp. We used to worry a lot about that like 5 years ago because JS used to cause slow load times, but nowadays the Internet is a lot faster, servers are faster, caching is better, etc... All the same, it's good coding practice to remove inline JS from HTML. If you want something fast and cross-browser supported look for jquery menus. There are free samples all over the place and they are brilliantly fast and you can list your menu items in a plain html list (the important thing). Happy coding... - P

Does bounce rate affect your rankings? Here's an oldie but goodie: http://me-in-seo.blogspot.com/2009/02/does-bounce-rate-affect-sites-google.html How can you lower your bounce rate: http://searchengineland.com/two-simple-rules-for-fixing-high-bounce-rate-pages-35125 What happened with Google's Panda update? http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers Note that Chrome collects direct user feedback on bounces. After you hit "back" from a SERP result it lets you block that site. No doubt doing so signals spam to the algo.