Can spiders submit html forms?

Hi,

Can anyone provide a definative answer to this question:

Can spiders submit html forms and index through to any pages accessed/redirected to from submission of a form?

I am referring to cases where they are not referred to secure pages after successful form submission.

Thanks.

from what I have read - not to be taken as fact - search engines will not follow a form. If they tried to follow mine, they would need to provide their name, phone number and a valid e-mail address before they could get anywhere. I have heard that google will in fact follow links that have data appended to them (index.cgi?p=good&i=god), while most other search engines will not.

webg

No,

Spiders will not (at least the major ones I know of), submit forms or interact with them in anyway.

computer

It's not that spiders CAN'T submit forms, it's that they WON'T because submitting forms means you need to specify certain values for fields to see the outcome -- how can a search engine know what values to submit the form with.

Creating a spider that can submit can easily be done though in PHP, without any problem.

I have a form on my casino site that lets you sign up for a newsletter. Spiders submit it every few days. There are no required fields so all they are following is a link. Its a pain - so dont do what I did!