No frames on inner pages

[HitProf]

Hi,

One site suddenly disappeared from Google some time this month for no specific reason I can see. (Disappeared=fallen out of the index).

Could it be that we've used the <noframes> tag for navigation on the inner pages? Is this considerd spam?

The frameset has a <noframes> section pointing to all inner pages and all inner pages have a <noframes> link to each other. It's a very small site (<10 pages). All pages used to be in the index for a long time (no everflux/freshbot involved).

Thanks!

[creative craig]

Are you sure its not in there?

Have you tried: allinurl:yoursite.com

Craig

Not calling you a liar or anything ;)

[HitProf]

Yep,

I'm completely sure. Totally vanished. Not PR0-d, just fallen out (or kicked out).

"Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.thisdomain.com".

"Your search - allinurl:thisdomain.com - did not match any documents."

And no, I didn't make any typo's either :(

[Marcia]

It may have been server downtime, all you can do is wait and see at the update, which won't be long.

[HitProf]

So you all don't think the noframes has anything to so with it?
In other words: is this safe to use on other sites?

[Receptional Andy]

<noframes> is a useful and user-friendly addition to a site for people without frames capable browsers, and yes, spiders too. If you stuff them with keywords, hidden text etc. then you could run into problems (for spam, not for noframes), but if you're just making the site more usable to search engines and visitors then there can be no real problem.

[edited by: Receptional_Andy at 2:56 pm (utc) on April 1, 2003]

[ikbenhet1]

Yep, it safe. I have about 20 framesets indexed, all with noframes for the spiders.
Lately i have seen google indexes the frames in a frameset even on sites without noframes section, wich makes me wonder if google still needs to have noframes to index a frameset, since it spides all links on the frames too.

>Is it spam?

Depends on if use to get sites higher that do not have 'good' content(ie doorway pages, redirects etc.). I assume you have good content to go with the links in noframes.

[h_b_k]

i have detected a problem with javascript based drop down menues in a frameset.

google doesn't follow the links in javascript.
to show SE the links there were used a noframe section including a full sitemap.
but the inner pages got only very low PR for two months.

after linking a pure sitemap from the homepage, the PR of the inner pages has been increased.

[Receptional Andy]

AFAIK <noframes> carries less weight than a normal page, and so content in a noframes area would lose to the same content on a normal page. Having a sitemap somewhere is by far the easiest method of ensurng spiders visit all of your pages, alongside, of course, a good internal linking structure. It's a good idea even on pages without frames.

[piskie]

HitProf,
I have experience over a couple of years promoting pre-existing framed sites (I wouldn't build a framed site myself) with a fair degree of success. IMHO I am prety good at knowing what goes and what doesn't go in these severely handicapped sites.

If you Sticky me the URL, I will let you know what I think. Also let me know of any changes or cleaning up that has happened in the last couple of months.

[HitProf]

Thanks for your input so far.

The site is a work in progress, recently taken over from a non SEO webdesigner. No spam at all as far as I can tell.

In the frameset/noframes only useless comments, has been there all the time.

The <noframes> section to the inner pages is a recent addition.
No spam or keyword stuffing, only links to the other inner pages.

The only other problem I can see: no outgoing links from this site and very few incoming.

ikbenhet1: Google has been indexing frames without help for some time now.

I'll wait for the update to see if it returns and let you know.