SEO 101 | The Beginning SEO Podcast �

Brent says:

July 25, 2007 at 11:52 am

Awesome podcasts. Looks like I have some changes I need to make to a site I’m currently building.

Brian, you mentioned a long character string inserted into the HTML of .NET pages. I’m an ASP.NET programmer and it sounds like you are talking about the hidden input .NET generates called the ViewState. The ViewState is an accumulation of the pages controls property values. In some cases (such as forms) this .NET generated hidden input is pretty much necessary so that the users form data is posted to the server. It’s not something you should really be putting into a cookie, although you can. On pages or controls where you don’t want or need information stored in the ViewState, you can use EnableViewState=”false”. You can use that for individual controls on the page, or set it for the entire page.

Is that what you are talking about? If so, my next question is, do bots really look at the contents of hidden inputs?

Thanks for the great info!

Images:

The images are downsized due to limited space here. The original dimensions may differ.
Click on the image to open it on a new tab.