SEO Crawla

Can a search engine robot/spider/crawler click a button?

Can a search engine robot/spider/crawler "click" a button?
A button on a web page.
What If the link is sent from a server only after a button is clicked?

Public Comments

1. Not actually click a button because the search engine bots simply read the code i.e. what you see if you click 'view source'.
   
   
   
   They will see the button code like this for example:
   
   
   
   <form>
   
   <input type="button" value="Example" onClick="window.location='http://www.yourdomain.com/example.html" />
   
   </form>
   
   
   
   This example is only one out of many ways a button can be displayed but provided the link is in the visible code as it is here, the search engine bots will see it. They will also follow the link unless thay have been told not to,
2. Search Engines cannot submit forms. So if you are referring to a tag like this:
   
   
   
   <input type="button" name="My Button Name">
   
   
   
   then the answer is NO. If however you are referring to an image that is contained within an anchor tag:
   
   
   
   <a href="http://myurl.com"><img src="myImage.jpg"></a>
   
   
   
   then the answer is YES.
   
   
   
   So it depends on the type of button you are referring to.
   
   
   
   Hope this helps,
3. I can't believe the answers that I'm reading. Yes, a bot can click a button. That's why most of the sites that you visit have CAPTCHA forms or something else to prevent bots from automatically submitting forms.
   
   
   
   If you're a webmaster, just browse their your stats log and you will see many bots that have reached error pages on your forms, because they've clicked the submit button, but didn't fill out all of the fields.