Googlebot - link following

[intel-ligent]

Hey people, Im fairly new to searchengine optimisation and have a few questions, would be grateful if peopel could help with any of them.

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Ive know googlebot follows "HFEF" and "SRC" links, but do these have to be complete eg. <a href="http:\\www.mysite.com\about.htm">

or would the following links work:

<a href="www.mysite.com\about.htm">
or
<a href="\about.htm">
or simply just
<a href="about.htm">

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also I want it to follow some hidden links, ive read somewhere the best way to do this is to link a 1x1 pixel image to the webpage so viewers cant see it, but googlebot can see it as a link.

Is there other ways to get it to follow hidden links?


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and if a button had the following code, would googlebot be able to follow it:


****
<tr>
<td width="8%" height="59" align="center">
</td>
<td width="23%" height="59" align="center">
<applet code="fphover.class" codebase="./" width="168" height="51">
<param name="textcolor" value="#FFFFFF">
<param name="font" value="Dialog">
<param name="fontstyle" value="bold">
<param name="hovercolor" value="#FF0000">
<param name="effect" value="glow">
<param name="color" value="#800000">
<param name="fontsize" value="17">
<param name="text" value="NEWS / GIG DATES">
<param name="url" value="news.htm">
</applet></td>
</tr>
*****

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thanks in advance

[intel-ligent]

Oh also, would the googlebot automatically follow .php pages and their content? I have a forum on my website (which isnt yet created) and wondered if the content of that would be indexed by google,

Thanks

[Larry]

don't "hide" links, text, etc.
Don't hide anything. Don't try and "trick" the spider either.

most spiders can't follow dynamic pages, etc.
such as pages with a '?' in the url.

really makes no different page is php, htm, html, asp, etc.