Are Google now indexing iFrames?
-
A client is pulling content through an iFrame, and when searching for a snippet of that exact content the page that is pulling the data is being indexed and not the iFrame page. Seen this before?
-
Yeah, I use iframes and if I want to be sure they are NOT indexed, I Just add a "noindex" tag. You may also want to add a "nofollow" tag to avoid spiders to follow links inside the frame. Using iframes may be a good idea to reduce the number of links on a page (Bruce Clay suggestion).
-
I've never seen it before, but like everyone here said, it's not a good idea.
This makes me wonder though:
1. Can you find the original page using a snippet? And if not:
2. Is the page contained in the iframe indexed? (Or better-phrased, is the page that is being framed "noindex"?)
It makes sense to me that if the framed page is noindex, that Google would index the content and attribute it to the page framing it.
One perfect example:
I embed videos using an iframe and then I make the video unlisted in YouTube. My embedded content is indexed and even displayed as a rich snippet....
-
I have noticed content within iFrames being indexed by google and text within those iFrames being attributed to the page/url that is hosting the iFrame. Not sure how often this applies. I avoid iFrames.
Merchant Circle uses them and their pages get credit for content in them.
-
It might have been covered but it does seem that google is ignoring iframes in relation to commets code posted on sites.for instance: our text cached version.: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8IZ95GICp7AJ:gaveltek.com/seoblog/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1
compare the page title to (use headers it easier)
www.gaveltek.com/seoblog the list "comments" and despite there being some the are not posted. However, I do believe general wordpress comments hold some weight. That is not to sayt that facebook comments do not, its just done via different metrics, like social, and trust, and egngagement.
Cheers
TODD
-
A good way to check is go to google.com and type in your full URL like this:
site:www.domain.com
Then you will be populated with your sites pages of course. Now there is a link there that says: "cache" and you can see what it cached.
I think they may be getting better at knowing what's in a iframe. Look at how many sites use facebook comments on the blog and how do you think thats ran? iframes. Do you remember google and adobe working together at reading .pdf's and flash.
The little magnifying glass has some cool technology behind it that I'm sure helped them know whats really on the site. Without getting to far off track I do feel like they are better at reading iframes. Just my .02c in this thread.
-
last thought... i've only ever used iframes in the aforementioned example. Not an ideal way to display your original content if you want it indexed.
-
It is very typical for Google to ignore iframes. I don't know the precise details of your situation but there are several reasons for iframing that might make sense - this is situational - so no hating!
-
you're an affiliate and using another offer (conversion form) that you have to iframe to generate leads, etc
-
you want to hide duplicate content that appears elsewhere on the site (although there are far more elegant ways to do this)
3)You're pulling video or other syndicated content from a publisher who wants to maintain control (ie not let you outrank them with their own content)
*** Remember that the iframed content can certainly be indexed but usually only from the destination URL's originating source. For example: You are www.insuranceaffilifate.com running an offer from www.insurance.com/form_1011 - you will most likely use insurance.com's form via iframe on your landing page. That form, unless it uses a NOINDEX meta tag, will likely be picked by the search engines from www.insurance.com but will be ignored on your site www.insuranceaffiliate.com.
Hope this helps.
-
-
I have to agree with Julich in that you should move the content to be truly located on www.domain.com instead of iframe.domain.com.
-
I totally agree that they shouldn't be using iFrames and it is part of my recommendations to them, but we need to work with what we have at the moment.
So just to clarify, you would say that www.domain.com which is pulling the data through from iframe.domain.com would rank?
Even though all the content except the navigation, footer, etc is on iframe.domain.com.
-
Normally, it would be www.domain.com (unless it doesn't provide any content outside the iFrame).
But it is not abnormal to also see iframe.domain.com in the SERPS, since it may have some backlinks pointing to it.
Anyway, using iframes is a weird technique and I recommend you merge those into www.domain.com if possible (and don't forget to do some 301 redirections to tell Google your pages have definitely moved to www.domain.com).
-
OK, so if www.domain.com was pulling through content from iframe.domain.com which domain would you expect to rank?
I would personally expect iframe.domain.com to rank as that is actually where the content is and the www.domain.com provides the link to that page. I am currently seeing both domains rank, which has lead me to ask the question.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google crawl drop
the crawl request of my company site: https://www.dhgate.com/ has dropped nearly over 95%, from daily 6463599 requests to 476493 requests at 12:00am on 9th, Oct (GMT+8). This dramatic dropping trend not only showed in our GSC crawl stats report but also our company's own log report. We have no idea what’s going on. We want to know whether there is an update of google about crawlling, or is this the issue of our own site? If something is wrong with our site, in what aspects would you recommend us to check, analyze and accordingly optimize?
Technical SEO | | DHgate_20140 -
Google Indexed a version of my site w/ MX record subdomain
We're doing a site audit and found "internal" links to a page in search console that appear to be from a subdomain of our site based on our MX record. We use Google Mail internally. The links ultimately redirect to our correct preferred subdomain "www", but I am concerned as to why this is happening and if it can have any negative SEO implications. Example of one of the links: Links aspmx3.googlemail.com.sullivansolarpower.com/about/solar-power-blog/daniel-sullivan/renewable-energy-and-electric-cars-are-not-political-footballs I did a site operator search, site:aspmx3.googlemail.com.sullivansolarpower.com on google and it returns several results.
Technical SEO | | SS.Digital0 -
How can I tell Google not to index a portion of a webpage?
I'm working with an ecommerce site that has many product descriptions for various brands that are important to have but are all straight duplicates. I'm looking for some type of tag tht can be implemented to prevent Google from seeing these as duplicates while still allowing the page to rank in the index. I thought I had found it with Googleoff, googleon tag but it appears that this is only used with the google appliance hardware.
Technical SEO | | bradwayland0 -
No Index PDFs
Our products have about 4 PDFs a piece, which really inflates our indexed pages. I was wondering if I could add REL=No Index to the PDF's URL? All of the files are on a file server, so they are embedded with links on our product pages. I know I could add a No Follow attribute, but I was wondering if any one knew if the No Index would work the same or if that is even possible. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MonicaOConnor0 -
Pages Indexed Not Changing
I have several sites that I do SEO for that are having a common problem. I have submitted xml sitemaps to Google for each site, and as new pages are added to the site, they are added to the xml sitemap. To make sure new pages are being indexed, I check the number of pages that have been indexed vs. the number of pages submitted by the xml sitemap every week. For weeks now, the number of pages submitted has increased, but the number of pages actually indexed has not changed. I have done searches on Google for the new pages and they are always added to the index, but the number of indexed pages is still not changing. My initial thought was as new pages are added to the index, old ones are being dropped. But I can't find evidence of that, or understand why that would be the case. Any ideas on why this is happening? Or am I worrying about something that I shouldn't even be concerned with since new pages are being indexed?
Technical SEO | | ang1 -
What is the best practice to re-index the de-indexed pages due to a bad migration
Dear Mozers, We have a Drupal site with more than 200K indexed URLs. Before 6 months a bad website migration happened without proper SEO guidelines. All the high authority URLs got rewritten by the client. Most of them are kept 404 and 302, for last 6 months. Due to this site traffic dropped more than 80%. I found today that around 40K old URLs with good PR and authority are de-indexed from Google (Most of them are 404 and 302). I need to pass all the value from old URLs to new URLs. Example URL Structure
Technical SEO | | riyas_
Before Migration (Old)
http://www.domain.com/2536987
(Page Authority: 65, HTTP Status:404, De-indexed from Google) After Migration (Current)
http://www.domain.com/new-indexed-and-live-url-version Does creating mass 301 redirects helps here without re-indexing the old URLS? Please share your thoughts. Riyas0 -
Website is not indexed in Google
Hi Guys, I have a problem with a website from a customer. His website is not indexed in Google (except for the homepage). I could not find anything that can possibly be the cause. I already checked the robots.txt, sitemap, and plugins on the website. In the HTML code i also couldn't find anything which makes indexing harder than usual. This is the website i am talking about: http://www.xxxx.nl/ (Dutch) The only thing that i am guessing now is the Google sandbox, but even that is quite unlikely. I hope you guys discover something i could not find! Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | B.Great0 -
Is google all over the place tonight?
Is it me or is google all over the place tonight? Whilst checking my rankings I came across a site with a page authority of 29 and 23 links from 5 domains ranking at number 6 for a competitive keyword! This site came from nowhere and I'm getting different results every time I search! Weird....
Technical SEO | | SamCUK0