Is Google Sending GoogleBot CSS Hunting: Google Crawling CSS Files?

A Cre8asite Forums thread links to a blog post named GoogleBot Requested a CSS File. This is not the first time I heard threads where people suspect GoogleBot is crawling their CSS files. But this one has the most discussion I have seen so far.

Some people in the thread think a manual review sparked the crawl. But I am not too sure about that.

The request in the log file looks like this:

66.249.72.52 - - [24/Oct/2006:17:17:35 -0500] “GET /global/x.css HTTP/1.1″ 200 8382 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

So it looks like Google crawled his CSS. But he never discusses if he disallowed the directory in his robots.txt file.

Anyway, for past articles on Google and CSS see:

• Does Google Read Your CSS Files? - November 11, 2005
• Hidden Divs Not Indexed by Google - December 15, 2005
• CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines - SES Session - December 6, 2006
• Using CSS To Hide Text: Search Engine Responses - December 18, 2006

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.