iframes & search engines

any problems I need to know about?

[claimsweb]

Im think about using iframes for an online form to control the size / shape within a confined area.

Read a little about them here and think they seem pretty straightforward.

Just got a concern that they might have a negative effect on seo generally. Anyone got any views on this?

[AWildman]

I use iframes on a site and it does very well in the serps. The framed pages have decent PR and SE visibility.

[tedster]

Spiders have not traditionally followed the src= attribute. All other links (the ones that change the iframe's content) look "vanilla" to a spider, as indeed they are - they only add in a target attribute to address the iframe.

I've found it helpful to ensure that somewhere or other in the website there is a straight HTML link to the original document in an iframe, the one loaded by the src attribute. That link can even be in the site map, but that's my only caveat.

And of course, it very useful to have some kind of scripting to help the visitor who arrives at your iframe intended page, but orphaned from its parent. At the very least, make sure there is on-page navigation in any iframed document to allow visitors to access your full site.

[claimsweb]

thanks for that!

[mcneely]

The I-Frames we are using, or rather how they are written has a message included in the code that directs any entity that cannot read frames to a straight url.

Bots have had certain difficulty in that they just see a white box with nothing in it, but will read the url marker we put in the box that basicly says, "well, if you can't read this, then go here"