Using Frames With Google

[mhildebr]

It is unclear whether Google will index a site with frames. I have inserted most of the content in the noframes tagged area on my website yet after two months I still am not in the index (even though the site is on DMOZ). Must I get rid of the frames to get a listing on Google?

[mack]

It can sometimes take up to 3 months for your site to appear in google if it is a new site.

[deejay]

hi mhildebr

I looked at a site just last night for someone here that was listed on Google and was frames based, so yes, Google can list them.

However, (and I'm not sure if this was specific to this site) in this case the content was all in a secondary frame and that content was not read by Google. Google had the URl in the database, and it came up in a keyword search based on text links from other sites, but Google's cache shot was blank.

If you can avoid using frames, do so.

If you can't avoid using frames, make sure you know them well enough to make sure the SEs can see your content.

my 2c :)

[Katarina]

Hi all!

Here and in many threads I have met the recommendation: Get rid of frames!
But I still do not understand why frames are supposed to be so bad. Could somebody, please, explain.

I love frames, both in surfing and on my own site. And Google indexes my site. May be it is because my site has a simple structure: main frame for content, two frames for links. No graphics, no flash, nothing extra, just text pages.

Do frames cause more problems on more complicated sites. Or even on my site without me knowing anything about it?

Katarina

[tedster]

Yes, Google can and will index frame pages - thousands of them from one site. And those pages can get good PR, but it does take extra attention.

It helps in Google to have at least some links on the framed content page. It also helps your visitors who arrive from a Google SERP...you want to give them some way to navigate past that page. Ideally you would pop it into its frameset.

> But I still do not understand why frames are supposed to be so bad. Could somebody, please, explain.

Here's a classic article from usability maven, Jakob Nielsen [useit.com].

From my point of view, one of the nasty problems is no bookmarking or easy email links.

[MHes]

Hi
I suspect google is wary of frames because of the potential abuse of the no frames tag.

They only like to index what the user will see.

[Katarina]

Hi,

Thank you for comments, I got a lot to think about. And I'll study Jakob Nielsen's thoughts.
Bookmark problems I knew, yes. Email problems I did not know.

And I hadn't thought of the possibility of abusing no frames tag. But the more I learn about things, the more I begin to think that there is nothing that can not be abused. Then why not no frames tags also.

I do have on the framed content page links to both of my site maps (one in English, another in Finnish). Thus anyone arriving to that page can navigate using site map without ever knowing anything about frames. I recommend the framed version on the site maps though.

And I have all the contents on the framed page (with links to site maps) between no frames tags for Google and other bots. It seems to work just fine.

Katarina

[SebastianX]

> They only like to index what the user will see.
Not true. Users with old browsers will see the content in the NOFRAMES tag.
I have #1 spots with frame sets. Google's content snippet on the SERP is taken from the NOFRAMES tag.
However, I don't use frames any longer.

[MHes]

"But the more I learn about things, the more I begin to think that there is nothing that can not be abused. Then why not no frames tags also."

Sure... abuse and get low rankings :) But the point is that even if you did a perfect noframes tag, will the google spider rate it as highly as a tables site? It should but it appears to be more difficult.

Its an interesting problem.....

[MHes]

SebastianX

Good point

My old granny using IE version 1 searched for " zimmer frames in Alaska" and found a frames site position 1.

;)