When a GoogleBot visits a site, what code is actually being viewed and indexed? Is it the raw html, for example, or the html that is presented through a browser? More to the point, are the bots indexing the css code, if the stylesheet is external, or what I would see if I did a View Source? Thanks in advance...
raw HTML output without CSS. It is still unknown if it renders Javascript, some people say it does, some others say it doesn't. It can also read PDF, Powerpoint and Word documents. Lately there have been several discussions that it may start indexing Flash content too but it is not sure yet.
One correction... Google also started to index SWF flash files and showing the text content on their index as yahoo have been doing for a while
Google doesn't index CSS. It just indexes the HTML output, PDF Docs, Dynamic Text in Flash files - that sort of stuff. If you're interested in finding how Google sees a specific web site, you can read this article here which features a tool to see what exactly Google sees in a page. (Disclaimer: Yeah, it's from my blog BTW ) Cheers!
I want to thank everyone for the input. The answer(s) to my question were more than I expected and all very valuable. Thanks again!
You can look in google webmaster tools, through you can find it our what google bots see on your website.
Because you've selected right place to learn SEO Techniques. DP Members will always Eager to Help you but just take care of correct categories and your value of Questions in DP. Welcome to DP and enjoy to read some old threads so you will get better ideas about more techniques. Thanks John