[pixelbath]

SEOs prefer to have the "relevant content" as high on the page as possible. Since viewstate is just a large blob, many SEOs assume it decreases relevancy. I've never seen results that confirm this assumption.

Edit: See sajidnizami's post for the relevant StackOverflow question. Though, this still doesn't make sense to me logically. Why would a search engine disregard a (reasonably) longer page?

[sajidnizami]

Longer page would increase page load time. A longer page with viewstate at the beginning would delay loading of content. Google penalizes pages that load slower.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-sit...