Googlebot now crawls framesets

and the noframes tag is not passing much PR

[trimmer80]

I'm not sure if this is a well known fact but I have a site that uses a frameset. Thus i used the noframes tag for the bots.

There is one frame that I do not have in the noframes and thus had a PR of zero. I have just noticed that this page (which is now a PR5) is being passed PR from the frameset ( which is a strong PR5).

Also I have a couple of links in the noframes tag that are not linked from anywhere else in the site. These used to have a PR4 and now have gone down to 2.

It looks as if googlebot is getting the frameset pages and thus decreasing the value of noframes tags.

[WebGuerrilla]

Google devaluing no frames isn't anything new. Try writing your frameset with an external JS file. Doing that will eliminate the code that indicates you are using a frameset.

I bet you will see an improvement.

[trimmer80]

are to referring to this :

If I take a normal frameset :

<frameset rows="130,*,45" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" noresize>
<frame name="header" src="header.html" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" noresize>
<frame name="main" src="main.html" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="auto" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" noresize>
<frame name="footer" src="footer.html" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" noresize>
</frameset>

<noframes> bot friendly navigation </noframes>

And change it to this :

<script language="JavaScript" src="frameset.js" type="text/javascript">
bot friendly navigation
<script language="JavaScript" src="endnoframes.js" type="text/javascript">

frameset.js

document.write('<frameset rows="130,*,45" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" noresize><frame name="header" src="header.html" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" noresize><frame name="main" src="main.html" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="auto" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" noresize><frame name="footer" src="footer.html" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" noresize></frameset><noframes>');

endnoframes.js

document.write('</noframes>');

This will make the bot think that the frameset does not exist and follow my bot friendly links as the only links on the page.
If this is what you meant then isn't this cloaking?

[DavidT]

Googlebot will crawl and index pages referenced in the frame src=page.html tag. you dont need anything in the no-frames area strictly speaking, this is nothing new.