Are Hidden divs bad

Does yahoo/google/msn recognize divs that are made hidden through javascript on load events

 

Yes, this is done by some to try and cheat the search engines.

 

Why would you use them ?

 

You would use them to add content and keywords on a page that doesn't really have a good place to put content

 

If a page doesn't really have a good place to put content, then don;t put content.

Understand my point or do you want to go further with it ?

 

what about a menu system? I plan on having a menu bar at the top that has direct links to all the major sections of my site. I also will have 1 link that opens a hidden DIV showing all the sub-section links. Will search engines just skip this?

 

So long as there is a method of showing the hidden content, you are probably ok. I used a similar system on my wife's site: http://www.byrequest.dj/25501/index.html

 

A page without content will not get ranked well b/c of lack of keywords. Therefore some content needs to be applied. Many sites use tricks to get content to appear at the top without actually displaying it on top. An example of this is match.com you can see the example using googles caching
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:izcwvySeW9oJ:www.match.com/+match&hl=en&lr=&strip=1

 

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:izcwvySeW9oJ:www.match.com/+match&hl=en&lr=&strip=0

That's the cache actually.

What you showed was a cache without images.

 

I did that to prove my point. If you'll notice that that cahed text doesn't appear in the same order as the cached version you linked to

 

That's because they used the code properly.

That text appears FIRST in the source order, but with CSS they make it appear below any other content.

It's only natural that within the text only version (no css) the text appears in source code order.

 

Thats untrue b/c I've used the same technique on my site where I use css to change the absolute position to make it appear lower while the content remains on the top but google diciphers that on place the content on the bottom. see example http://www.google.com/search?q=cach...secupid.com/+Japanese+Cupid&hl=en&lr=&strip=1

If you look at the source code the content appears first but googles cache places it at the bottom. There is a specific method for doing this that I havn't been able to figure out yet