Alright you guys who know what you're doing. I need a few words. Okay, I understand the basics of why frames are bad (ie search engine can't see from one frame into another, and I've seen the lame NOFRAME work arounds, and heard a little bit about some of the alternatives. I get the very basics, but I have to explain it to someone else (pretty high up) so I'll need to have a technical and a laymans explaination. Heres what I'd like to see if there is something out there like this ... A simple 'diagram' type explaination of the obstacle that frames present to Search Engines, and some simplified samples of options like SSI, and ...??? As far as I understand it SSI - Server Side includes: Are much like frames in that you have the navigation, header and footer area housed on your server, and these are called by some sort of 'included tag in a template. For the content area, either variables in the URL string, or include tags in the code will call up unique pages also housed on the server. Am I on the right track or way off in left field..? If you know of a resource thats easy to understand (I'm obviously not Mr. Technical) that defines the obstacle well, or the SSI (or other) solution(s) please let me know.
I don't have the answer you're looking for, but felt I had to jump in and say that not all framed sites are bad. My site gets crawled every day and it is an Advanced Access framed site. While I know the general concences is that these sites are no good, I do quite well with mine. Google alone has some 528 pages of mine indexed. You can't get those kinda numbers if are "bad for spiders", right? Sorry to sort of "hi-jack" fellow zonie!
Good, good, good....hmmmm so how is Google indexing the framed pages..? Are the framed pages linked somewhere else on the site..? (sitemap, or in the code - noscript, noframe etc)
All pages are linked the same, whether it's from the site map or from the home page or from an interior page. There's a Java script that is in the site that adds the frame to the URL which makes the page sort of load twice, I think. Our URL start out www.sitename.../pagemanager/default.aspx/page=1234567 and then become www.sitename.../nav.aspx/page=/pagemanager/default... So, the Java adds the frame when it adds /nav.aspx/page=/ Mouse over any link on my site (except the MLS one since ARMLS dictates how that is to be) and see the URL, then click it and look the new URL. Ignore the %20 if you see them, it is a IE issue and replaces / Somehow Advanced Access has it figured out becuase I even have many interior pages that rank on page one in Google for their KW's.