IFRAMES and indexing

[RonS]

I looked and looked using the various search functions, but I couldn't seem to find an answer to this.

I have a single page on which I'd liek to add an IFRAME referencing another page on the web.

Will the contents of the other page be included in my page for indexing purposes? I really don't want that info to be included in the content of my page, I don't want to use it as a draw for SEO or anything like that. I just want to display the page, and I don't want to be penalized for duplicate content (or any other reason.)

thx

[edited by: tedster at 3:43 am (utc) on July 10, 2007]

[tedster]

Google indexes urls, not "pages", and the content of an iframed url is on a different url from its containing page. So iframed content is most definitely not included when Google indexes the parent "page". I use iframes all the time for exactly this purpose of keeping content OUT of the index for a given url.

As an example, on one site I recently helped set up, there is a long legal disclaimer that we do not want to be indexed on multiple URLs. It could create duplicate content issues -- and on some pages, it would swamp the relatively minimal content that is unique to the page. So we put the disclamer in an iframe on all the required pages. That does the job perfectly.

[RonS]

That sounds wonderful. In addition to what I'm trying to do, I have a similar situation to yours with a large footer that I could stick in an IFRAME, too, that would be cool.

2 quick questions:

1) When you look at the cached version, do the contents of the IFRAME show?
2) If you google

site:yoursite.com "phrase from disclaimer"

you get nothing?

And a just curious:
Does G follow that link and transfer PR to it?

[tedster]

1) The cached version shows the cached source code to the user's browser. So, just as with any images on the page, the user's browser then asks the site's server for the content of the iframed source URL and then displays it. However, that content is not in the cache itself . This can be verified by clicking on Google's link in the cache page's header that says "Click here for the cached text only."

2) Seeing the disclaimer in site: operator results depends on whether you allow Google to index the iframed url or not. It's your choice -- you can use a robots.txt disallow rule, or a meta robots noindex if you want to keep the disclaimer out of Google's index.

As to whether PR is transferred, the last I checked it was not, unless there are links targeted directly to the iframe in the form <a href="iframe.url" target="iframename">. An iframe src attribute is not, strictly speaking, a link -- nand PageRank is defined by links. In a case ssuch as my disclaimer, there is no reason for a link because there's no reason to have the user change what is displayed in the iframe.

[edited by: tedster at 7:10 am (utc) on July 10, 2007]

[RonS]

Thanks.

In #2, I meant "you don't get any results for any of the pages that contain the disclaimer within an IFRAME." In other words, you don't get the hundreds of pages that have the disclaimer.

I'm really just asking the same question about caching from a different angle, I suppose.

I have done it, and will sit with my fingers crossed for the next 6 months.

Thanks, tedster!

[edited by: RonS at 7:00 am (utc) on July 10, 2007]