Are pdf's Spiderable

Site of pdf's with good content, needs to be indexed

[brass monkey]

Hi all,

If this is a duplicate thread, I apologize. Please advise of a thread regarding my situation. (I looked, but really didn't see anything to my liking).

Anyway, here is my situation:
I have a client whose web site is comprised of pdf product pages. Before deciding to scrap the site and rebuild (since he offers thousands of products), I wanted to see if anyone has experienced their pdf's getting picked up. I know that pdf's are spidered, but are they spidered like a normal html page or is there something special?

Any advice or experiences on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

bRaSs_MoNkEy

[berli]

pdf's are spidered the same way txt files are. That is, Google will index your text, but it will not follow links in the text. (If that has changed, then somebody pipe up. AFAIK, there is no way to view a pdf file that will let you follow a url, although MS Word docs, which Google also indexes, do allow you to follow links.)

I find the pdf indexing very convenient. I always view in cache. Sorry if webmasters find that annoying, but I hate having my browser launch some other, SLOW program to view a pdf file. :^)

[bhartzer]

I continually see a lot of PDFs showing up in the search results, especially in some very niche industries. So, it is very probable that the PDFs will be picked up and will show up in the results.

Optimizing a PDF for ranking purposes, though, is something that I'm still a little confused about and perhaps someone could shed some light on the subject. Or maybe this topic has been covered before?

[Jenstar]

I have PDF files that have been spidered by Google. When they come up in the search results, it will also give you the option to view the PDF file as HTML. I also hate my computer slowing down to view a PDF, especially if I am not sure if it is even what i am looking for, and I often use the "view as html" option.

[brass monkey]

Thanks for the replies...

Jenstar, regarding the option to view as pdf or html, I am with you. I usually view the html version. Now is this something that is built into the site or is this an automatic default by google?

BrAsS

[hutcheson]

This is a feature of the Google cache.

[Jenstar]

This is something that Google does. I haven't looked into it too closely, but I believe they do it to most (if not all) PDF files they include in the results. They do restrict the file size of what is viewable using the "view as html", so if it is a large pdf file, it will stop after a certain number of K. I am not sure at what size they stop, but it might be 100K, as they do with the size of caches pages in Google.

Also, be aware that the "view as html" version sometimes does funky things with the appearance of your pdf as well.

[doc_z]

Google follows links within PDF file (and use them for PR calculation).

[brass monkey]

Thanks Jenstar for your input...
It is greatly appreciated...

BrAsS

[fathom]

Not only that > make a print friendly version of your site with all the good references content (pared down a bit) and link to more info on your various web pages.

And don't forget the disclaimer that suggests webmasters and site owners are welcome to post this on there website.

TALK ABOUT FAST ACTION LINK DEVELOPMENT > particularly if you ready have something worth while.

...and they don't even need to give you a link for credit... heehee!

[GoogleGuy]

We'll should PDFs just fine if there are enough links to them.