Can search engines read CSS?

I'm wondering if search engines can read and interpret CSS.

If I create my webpages using only CSS tags instead of using standard HTML tags like <h1>,<h2>,<font>,<b> then can a search engine interpret my webpage.

For example, if I use <span> or <div> tag for different sections of my website can search engine determine what contents of my website is important by reading the font size and styles through CSS definations?

[Wail]

Don't move away from h1 tags. These are your bread and butter of SEO.
The best of both words is to apply CSS classes to your h1 tags.

No, search engines struggle with CSS, I suspect most of their efforts in the area is to look for spam.

There's no CSS style which implies importance, it's the statement of importance which you'll loose and which will kick your site if you dump dear old Mr h1.

[Chris_D]

Look in your logfiles. I've not yet seen a SE robot request the yourwebsite.css file.

Web standards advocates that you should separate content (html, xhtml) and presentation (css) - thats a foundation. Use semantic code (eg Hx headings) in your html - and 'style' it using CSS. Don't 'hide' it - style it.

[Irishrose]

I am optimizing this http://www.metasoft.com.ua site. The design does not allow for using the <h1>, <h2> and so on tags. The titles are actually images. They have alts in place etc. How would search engines take it if I put those <h1> tags in comments around the title images? Or yet another idea I've had, will it do me any good/bad if I put them in alts of the title images around the text explaining the image contents?

Thank you.

[Marcia]

Search engines can, and have been seen, fetching external CSS files - though not very recently. Namely, Alta Vista was reported to have been seen doing it back around 2001. But it's seriously doubful whether it would be worth the resources it would take for any engine to fetch and parse associated CSS files on a consistent basis for all sites.

[PhilC]

Why doesn't the design lend itself to H tags? The text at the top of product pages' main content looks perfectly suited to an H tag.

If it were me, I'd stick another H tag that contains a target searchterm under, or above, that text. It would also be useful for visitors to give them a better idea what each page's software is about.

Don't forget you can style H tags for font size and margins if the default margins don't look good.

[Michael Martinez]

Originally Posted by Irishrose

I am optimizing this http://www.metasoft.com.ua site. The design does not allow for using the <h1>, <h2> and so on tags. The titles are actually images. They have alts in place etc. How would search engines take it if I put those <h1> tags in comments around the title images? Or yet another idea I've had, will it do me any good/bad if I put them in alts of the title images around the text explaining the image contents?

Thank you.

Here is something to try which will require minimal alteration of your current page design.

Put an H1 tag with the words "Financial Applications by Metasoft" at the beginning of this paragraph:

Metasoft Ltd. is an outsourcing software development company that was created in 1999 in Kiev, Ukraine. The core of the company is a group of professional mathematicians and programmers who were earlier specialized in large banking systems and at some point supplied about 1/3 of the banking software for the Ukrainian market.

You can use your style sheet to alter the appearance (font) of the H1 tag so that it looks more like your text.

Then, below your last paragraph:

Metasoft Ltd. is an IBM Partner in programs "Partner World for Software" (PWSW Location ID is uwzntr2) and "Partner World for Developers" (company membership number is 19154686).

Place an H2 tag with the text "Outsourcing Software Solutions by Metasoft".

Then change your keywords meta tag to include just those two phrases, and put the text of the H1 tag into your title tag (nothing else).

That is about as good you can get without changing the design of your page.

Embedding text in images is usually the kiss of death to a Web site when it comes to SEO, but most people who do this just think it looks too cool and don't want to give it up.

So, that is a compromise which may help you.

[Irishrose]

Thanks for replies everybody, they were certainly helpful, especially Michael Martinez's. I will try that.

[Sebastien Billard]

there is no problem using an image with alt attribute inside <h1> tags

[Wail]

Originally Posted by Sebastien Billard

there is no problem using an image with alt attribute inside <h1> tags

There's no problem with using images and alts inside h1 tags.
There's no benefit in using images with alt attributes inside h1 tags though; you need straight text for the h1 to effect.

[Irishrose]

Getting back to what this thread started with, just thought that one thing that speaks indirectly in favour of the supposition that search engines do pay some attention to CSS is their fight with invisible text/text too small to read and stuff like that considered as spamming techniques in SEO. If there are no indications of the text colour/size in the HTML code but they are defined in CSS search engines do need to read CSS to know anything about this text. Does this make sense?

[Irishrose]

Well, looks like I got proof that at least some bots do ask for css.
Here's a string from my site's log:

lj2531.inktomisearch.com - - [22/Mar/2005:21:15:30 +0200] "GET /mystyle.css HTTP/1.0" 200 2819 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)"

[skattabrain]

do you think that SE's will honor blocking your css file via robots?
if that's the case ... sounds like open season to spam to me.

[Irishrose]

Haven't tried blocking it through the robots.txt file since this only happened once as far as I could see. If anybody else did post your experience please, just for the sake of it.

In theory, I think those that normally honour robots.txt will honour it in this case as well, those that don't of course won't. No practical proof of it though. Considering the backdoor for spamming this can provide, maybe some smarter bots have a special policy regarding css, who knows...

[Mel]

If you have nothing to hide there is no reason to hide your CSS files. If you do have something to hide, you should be worrying about your competitors outing you more than spiders finding it IMO.

[clasione]

I have often wondered about this myself....

Interesting observation with the log files... This would mean that an external css file could be of more benefit than one contained within the webpage IF you are using unnatural font sizing..

[skattabrain]

i'm not trying to cheat anything ... but i do like talking about it ... cause our compeition could be doing it ... and if they are ... then you gotta roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty if you want to be a player.

of course ... i'm sure there are white hats that would probably take the whine to google route ...

assuming google does indeed honor the robots file ... it leaves sinister implications and means a huan would have to review and say "nope ... i can't see that content".

and whenever that happens ... there will be lots of cheating going around for a while before it gets dealt with.

doing this could give you the advantage cloaking gives you with a simple CSS file.

[skattabrain]

here is an example: Hidden Text Test

view the source

[Irishrose]

Originally Posted by clasione

I have often wondered about this myself....

Interesting observation with the log files... This would mean that an external css file could be of more benefit than one contained within the webpage IF you are using unnatural font sizing..

It doesn't mean it, according to the data from my log files... (BTW I assumed we were talking about external CSS files all the way, no?) There we see Yahoo Slurp asking for my css file. It would mean it if we were to assume the SEs honour the indication not to spider css in the robots.txt. Otherwise, even using a CSS on a different site wouldn't be of any use.

[Irishrose]

Originally Posted by skattabrain

here is an example: Hidden Text Test

view the source

Right... all I could see is a little dot by the left side of my window when I selected all the text on the page... And yes, this is exactly the technique used by SE spammers that SEs specifically warn against. However, the SEs might be speaking of the font properties definition in the HTML file itself, not defining it through CSS. But seeing how Slurp asks for my external CSS file, I am led to believe that SEs DO pay attention to CSS - it's been long enough since the use of CSS became a very common technology.