What Defines A Page Footer?

[austtr]

We talk about page footers as if they are a defined entity and experts make comments about how keyword stuffed links in footers, and other abuses, can impact Google's assessment of a page. But what is "the footer"? You can use multiple <footer> tags in HTML5 and/or add a footer element in the CSS file, but "the footer" has been an acknowledged part of web page design long before those options were available.

So when a SEO expert claims that footer abuse with manipulative/spammy links is the likely reason for a site hitting a Penguin trip-wire, what part of the page are they actually talking about? Is it the part between <footer> tags in a HTML5 document or the css element... or what about older HTML4 sites without the tags?

To the developer of Site A, a horizontal line of links to About Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions etc on a contrasting background might be the last visible content on the page and is their interpretation of the footer. But Site B might have those links in a drop down as part of the top navigation and their footer might be to replicate the main navigation so the user does not have to scroll back to the top. And so on for Site C, D etc, all applying their own differing logic as to what belongs at the bottom of the page. In other words, footers can be very different things to different people depending on the style and intent of their site.

From the perspective of avoiding SEO pit-falls, is it simply a matter of treating the html code immediately above the closing </body> as the place that Google will look for link abuse? If so that is not really helpful…. my closing line might be 1 line, yours might be 30 lines.

As you can probably guess, this is a subject that confuses me.

[Rasputin]

A footer would usually be considered to be the part of the bottom of the page that remains constant across the entire site, or perhaps a significant part of a site.
I doubt that the use of < footer> or any other tags etc plays a role in defining a footer.

[netmeg]

I agree with Rasputin.

I always wanted to say that somewhere, ork ork

[lucy24]

"And that's not something you hear every day".

I was going to say "stuff that's the same on every page", but "remains constant across the entire site" sounds more grownup.

If it's at the bottom of the page it's a footer. If it's at the top of the page it's a header. If it's on the side it's a, uhm, sidebar-- but it probably comes near the beginning or the end of the page source, since there's no "off to the side" in html.

And if the page is made with any popular cms the recurring stuff probably does go inside something called "navfooter" or, more likely,

<div class "pagefooter">
<div class "navfooter">
<div id = "navfooter">
<div class = "subnav">
<div class = "innersubnav">
<div id = "bottomcontent">
<div class = "almost-there">
<div class = "content-coming-up">
<div id = "im-not-kidding">
text-content-here

which search engines will recognize on sight.