iFrames - good or bad? Is the algo bug really fixed?

[cazzzk]

Thanks to Tedster for highlighting a discussion on Google Groups where iFrames were mentioned by Mr Cutts.

Next question...if Google once saw iFrames *on* a site as possibly spammy (but is apparently fixed), what does Google think of the sites that provide iFrames?

Our site provides iFrames for other sites to use - would this penalise us?

Is there anything we can do, such as adding 'nofollow' to the iFrames, which will make them appear legitimate?

(Still trying to look for possible causes of the penalty inflicted on our website back in October - not making a million changes but constructing a list of possibilities).

[onetry]

I had problems using iframes.

This is really bad because they are useful.

[tedster]

For reference, here's the original information:

Here's an interesting tidbit from a rare Matt Cutts post on Google Groups. It seems that there was a bug in the algo for spotting spammy use of iframes. It got spotted an 'hopefully' fixed around December 1.

...our search algorithm saw a large area on the blog that was due to an IFRAME included from another site and that looked spammy to our automatic classifier. I believe that this bug has been fixed now. We also added additional safety checks to the relevant system that would escalate to an engineer if this site had the same issue in the future.

Google Groups discussion [groups.google.com]

[g1smd]

I wonder what they made of the iframe I have, one that holds a Google Gadgets CSE site search box. That site has never performed.

[dstiles]

I'm running one significant sales site with iframes (four of them!) and google seems happy about it - always has. Ditto another 3-frame site until a new design went live last month.

I am no longer designing with iframes, though, depite them making it a far faster & better buying experience. With iframe exploitations around now, too many people will be turning them off (if they haven't already).

[Lame_Wolf]

I use iframes on one of my sites. It has never harmed the site, either in SERPS or visitors. It is only about 200x200 in size and use it to advertise different things on the (same) site. Saved me having to upload 1000's of pages every time I wanted an advert altered.

[dstiles]

There are other ways of doing this if you use dynamic programming such as PHP or ASP. I prefer not to use iframes except (in the past) where in-page content changes were preferred, such as updating shopping carts within the page to save re-loading the whole product page again.

But as I said, I've now dropped iframes because of virus scares that cause some people to turn off iframes using, eg, NoScript.

[cazzzk]

Thanks - I think we'll use nofollow on the links back to our site anyway, just in case.