I'm hoping to get a Google answer to this as I cannot seem to find an
answer to it elsewhere.  For those of you who don't know what
Viewstate is, Microsoft's .NET utilizes a hidden form which contains a
string which can be of a variable length--very short to extremely
long--to retain the 'state' of the controls on the page.  Viewstate is
placed in the BODY tag of the page, as one of the higher elements (it
is always above any copy on the page).

My question is:

Does Viewstate have a negative impact on the amount of content on a
web page that may be indexed?  Here are a few web pages on .NET web
sites where you can see the viewstate, its length, and position in the
DOM (view source and search for '__VIEWSTATE'):

short viewstate: http://www.terralever.com
a little longer: http://www.ensynch.com/RequestInfo.aspx
huge: http://www.cambridgeproperties.com/urbanCommunities.aspx?UrbanCoreID={65DD1077-7CD1-4660-B947-214F573CE52A}

least until it has a certain level of trust with the page).

Would .NET's VIEWSTATE hamper indexing of content?  Since it is in a
hidden form filed, is there any chance that it is ignored?  If it
isn't, does it have an impact?  Large impact?  Small impact?

VIEWSTATE can be moved to the bottom of the page.  It's not a trivial
change, so I'm trying to understand its importance in the grand
scheme.  Any help is appreciated!

Some of those viewstates are just crazy, way too large.

I would really work on getting them as small as possible. On a site I
worked on I even went so far as to have them filtered from the final
output (the problem is that if a user accesses a cached page with
viewstate, none of the form elements will work).

Regarding the size of a page that Google indexes, you might want to
take a look at http://www.sitepoint.com/article/indexing-limits-where-bots-stop
- Google goes to ca 500kb, but remember that users aren't going to be
happy with a page that has so much stuffing.

John

I think that reducing the size of VIEWSTATE as much is possible is a
great idea.  What I'm really trying to determine is if Google will let
us know if it ignores VIEWSTATE because it is in a hidden form field.

Anyone from the Google Team out there?

On Aug 29, 12:13 am, JohnMu wrote: