<iframe> used to hide text

text hiddent behind the actual frame

[humpingdan]

<IFRAME name=News align=left marginWidth=0 marginHeight=0 src="test.htm" frameBorder=0 width=170 scrolling=yes height=289>
<ahref="http://www.domain.com/"target="_blank Domain</a>
Text TEXT Text <br>
Text TEXT Text <br>
Text TEXT Text <br>
Text TEXT Text <br>
</IFRAME>

insert that into a page and it creates a frame and holds test.htm within it and displays it but it also is used to cloak the hyperlink and lines of text behind it! anyone seen this used before?

[MonkeeSage]

That is the appropriate use of the iframe, the text "behind" it is not actually rendered unless the browser doesn't support iframes. It's just like using a <noframes> tag on a page with real frames. W3C rec for iframes [w3.org].

Jordan

[humpingdan]

but robots will be able to read the text and links behind it though? without the user being able to see it!

[Dayo_UK]

Yes, I agree this is appropriate use of IFRAME tags.

If using this yourself I would suggest a limited amount of text though and not to keyword stuff.

[MonkeeSage]

I'm not sure if bots see it or not, but users see it when they are supposed to see it -- when their browser doesn't support inline frames. It's not hiding the text in the sense of a hidden layer, &c., it is an accessibility feature, to make sure that if a browser doesn't support iframes the user will still see the content. <noscript> <noembed> and <noframes> all do the same thing for their respective elements, they are just distinct tags, while the <iframe> is like the <object> element, you just nest any content inside of it and if the browser doesn't support, it renders the nested content instead.

Jordan

[humpingdan]

so lets just say i put a little bit of keyword text behind it, with mostly other filler text then i should see web bots read it along with following the link to the age inside the frame? correct?

how do i do a hidden layer jordan?

[MonkeeSage]

I have no idea if the bots read the nested content in the iframe or not. You could try some spider sims and see.

To make a hidden layer just use display: none; or visibility: hidden; on a <div> or <span>. I've heard tell that many SEs don't like that kind of thing, though, and that you may even get a spam report filed against you if the text never become visible (e.g., on mouseover or :hover or similar).

I don't know if that is accurate or not, but I would use the technique with discretion, like for menus or flyouts, &c. I definitely wouldn't wouldn't put keywords in layers that never get displayed.

Jordan