noscript vs. display:none;

I had my first real SEO argument today; it felt pretty good. Essentially, the new SEO firm believes in doorway, excuse me, information pages; and to be honest, from the looks of things they appear to work and rank well. At present they hide links to information page sitemaps within <noscript/> tags and place these in the <head/> of each page. My initial thoughts were that

1. The <noscript/> might have more weight if it were in the <body/>
2. The links might have more weight if they were in a hidden div

The general consensus of my colleagues was that this was a 'spammy' technique as

1. The <noscript/> is not to be displayed so why place it in the <body/>
2. The hidden div would constitute as a cloaking mechanism

I disagreed with both of those points as the <noscript/> tag is already being misused, im simply suggesting that we move it within the code in an attempt to increase weightage; i.e. stuck in the header a search spider knows that its not to be displayed to a user and therefore might not give it much consideration, but within the body the search-spider thinks that it should be displayed and therefore might pay it more attention. And a hidden div is far less 'spammy' as the search-spider will see it everytime - it doesn't have to ask itself whether it can handle some code (read script) before considering the alternative (read noscript). But anyways, we agreed to disagree. Still think Im right though. Was good to finally get to openly discuss some of my geeky knowledge.

You have been reading noscript vs. display:none; which was posted on Wednesday, June 08, 2005.
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