Are iframes indexed by search engines?

Hi -

I'd like to build a design based on iframes, and I was wondering if iframes were still being avoided by search engines.

I want to use iframes so that I can manage my content on blogger, and then include that into my website.

Does anybody see any downfalls to this approach?

 

Iframes are a grey area, I would suggest avoiding them if possible.

 

Don't use iframes, ever. The only acceptable use for iframes is when you have a 1px iframe used for holding data. You could easily learn a little bit of PHP that would help you with content management.

 

Agreed. Never use frames.

 

frames=bad

 

Thanks for the feedback.

Everything I've read says frames is bad. It would just help speed up the development quite a bit.

Is using Ajax to load content into a layer a better approach then using an iframe?

 

or just use simple php includes ... you can have links very SEO friendly and don't have to worry because SE will crawl entire site

 

Well, if your objective is to have your site crawled and accessed by a search engine, Ajax may not be a good idea.

Bots cannot interpret Javascript, so the results could be fully visible to human visitors with Javascript enabled browsers but invisible to spiders.

 

No. Search engines can't read anything generated with javascript or AJAX.

 

As a suggestion, you can publish two versions of the same content, one made with Ajax and other alternative without Ajax using a HTML <noscript> tag.

 

Sticking loads of content in noscript tags is asking for trouble IMO.

 

Well I have a custom made PHP script which uses dynamic content and I know very well it can only wokr with either frame or iframe, now my question is out of the two which one is better ?

 

If you want to feature in the search engines never use frames. Otherwise you can do what you like as nobody will ever see it.

 

I have a lot of problems with including one page in another without using dynamic languages. If you don't want to use php, you should try server side includes.

 

My experience shows that works in a similar way. I had a site that used frames and another that user iframes and both contents were crawled (not very well) by Google. But it's preferable not use neither. I had problems because the content of frames were important and weren't archived the way I'd like.

There some are exceptions. For example, MSDN library uses frames and is perfectly indexed. But I think this is not regular.

 

I like this idea. I think I will start with an iframe version to get things running quickly. I have a large navigation interface thats very important to the site, and I don't want to reload it each time.

In the future, I could always add a PHP include version that mirrors the content so search engines would be happier.

 

Iframes and duplicate content. Search engines will love that.

Seriously you came here asking for advice and got some really good tips. Everybody said don't use frames. Why do you insist on using them?

 

You should be more willing to put some time and effort into learning the stuff that the veterans here are telling you that you need to learn.

I remember when I was younger I would always do everything the quickest way even if it was the wrong way. But as a successful adult, I do things the right way the first time .

 

Yes, this is true. I'm just starting to accept this.

Thanks for all the great advice. I'm going to step back, and rethink my approach - and find away to reach the same goals without any type of frames.

 

Well done!!! I forgot to say that if someone must use frames (sometimes can be useful), don't forget to add a <noframes> tag that includes links to the inner pages.