Is removing the Horizontal scroll bar consider SE Spam?

[Manco35]

I would like to add a small text menu that would be outside of our set website page size. Our site is in 800x600 resolution and there is no one place to have this menu that would be common to all 2,800 pages within the site and therefore our only recourse is to place it outside on the top-right corner. The menu would be visible to people using 1024x768 and above, but outside of the margins for 800x600 and below.

The menu is also not integral to the navigation of the site; it will be used more as in-site anchor text for SEO purposes.

My question is; would search engines consider this black-hat or Spam if some viewers were not able to view this menu?

I know that removing the vertical scroll bar is considered Spam, but I haven't heard anything on the horizontal.

Thanks for any input on this.

[beu]

Is removing the vertical scroll bar good for users?

[Manco35]

Removal of the VERTICAL scroll bar has been construed as Spam by the engines for quite some time and something that I wouldn't do, but I'm talking about the HORIZONTAL scroll bar being removed. Most people would still be able to view this menu and those that don't can easily access the same pages through the main menu. So it won't affect one's enjoyment of the site in any way.

I would like to know if anyone's had any experience with SE's deeming the removal of the horizontal scroll bar as Spam.

Thanks!

[BuckfastMonk]

I have never heard this before. Actually I find it quite, well, weird

What about sites that don't need them. Splash pages, small pages . . .

[Manco35]

Hi and thanks for your remarks. This is indeed something unusual that I haven't used before, but it's the only way that I can see getting this text-based menu into our site due to each internal page having a unique layout.

The only reason I want to remove the horizontal scroll bar is because I find it very annoying and unprofessional when I visit a website that needs to be scrolled horizontally.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "What about sites that don't need them. Splash pages, small pages . . ."

For people using 800x600, they won't even know there is a menu. For anyone else using higher resolutions, they'll see a text-based menu on the top-right corner of the site - outside of the layout, which would look more like a quick-click menu type navigation.

Thanks again for any input as I've searched the far reaches of the web and can't find anything on this topic.

[jimbeetle]

You are going to have to be absolutely, positively, one hundred percent, for danged sure certain that you have tested that 800 x 600 layout in every possible combination of anything that would affect the rendering before you remove the horizontal scroll bar.

Best professional practice: Keep the scroll bar.

The menu is also not integral to the navigation of the site; it will be used more as in-site anchor text for SEO purposes.
If you have to jump through all these hoops to get some relevant internal anchor text your best bet is to start over with a new site architecture.

[Manco35]

We've decided to be safe and approachable by adding the new anchor text menu to the very top of our page instead of outside the 800x600 area. Thanks for all your comments on this, as always, when it comes to optimization, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Of course, this has been an interesting thread, so if there is someone out there with some hands-on experience, I'd love to hear about it.

Regards.

[whitehat]

Can someone elaborate on the 'removing the vertical scrollbar' being spam bit please?

[Manco35]

Removing the vertical scroll bar has been used by some black-hat optimizers to place a ton of useless text below the usual site layout. The spiders view the entire page with all the keyworded crap throughout the page, where a regular visitor will only see what's "above the fold". Removing the vertical scroll bar keeps people from being able to scroll down and view the garbage.

It's used to stuff a page full of keywords for the spiders only.