Detecting GoogleBots

[ryanh_106]

Hi,

The menu system on my site is all done through PHP includes and is widely image based with image rollovers. However fancy it may look I realise that GoogleBots would find it much easier to navigate a text-based menu system. As I can see in my access logs that GoogleBots have been wandering through my site I was wondering if it would be possible to detect in my include scripts whether the visitor was a normal user or a GoogleBot (varying IP's) and then include a text based menu system whenever a GoogleBot was visiting instead of the standard image menu.

Any ideas are MUCH appreciated as I am trying to get our site as much pulicity as I can

Thanks
Ryan Heath
Which publicity, however, doesn't extend to advertising in these forums - Moderator

[Weedpacket]

Have a look at the User-Agent string (one of the elements in the $_SERVER[] array). But if you had a decently-designed menu system it would still be easily navigable by bots even if it did have a lot of rollover styling (which the bots simply wouldn't see).

[MrOnline]

I've read that google will give you a negative page rank if your page changes just for googlebot. If you can, you should make sure that all your alt tags are set on any of your images, and maybe offer a link somewhere in your layout for a text only version.