I don't remember where I saw this,  are search engines able to read iframes and is using them a foolish idea?

I was thinking of using them on some pages instead of links to other pages but I have a funny feeling that I read some place that they are not the way to go.

They can kind of read what’s in them, but you need to convince the spiders that they really do need to crawl the document, usually a direct html link to the iframe will help. But why create a risk factor?

Just experimenting and learning.

As I understand...Yes they will read the content and possibly index it.
I had to ask myself the same question before when I could not get an AJAX function to work on one of my sites. I ended up just creating an iframe with a java timer to reload it.

As long as you have a link to that Iframe itself somewhere else (like a sitemap document) you should be ok.

Personally i would dodge it, unique pages have a better chance of indexing independently than an iframe has. Logic says it isnt the best plan. Then again, sometimes search engines manage to evade logic completely. Correct use of css and some php could nullify the need for iframes... which brings me to the question, what are you intending on using the iframes for? I use them in  my cms system... but only because i have no intention of letting it be indexed.

Sorry that I didn't answer sooner.  I will be using them for a short time, until I can finish the added pages for each division on the free-domain-account.  I am about 25% done but I do not want to put these pages up till they are completely finished.  (Mainly because I have just figured out how to move some of the stull from those pages that the iframe is based on, and not loose the database connections or some other small connections.)

Temporary iframes? Databases?

Sounds like you'd be better off either developing everything in a temp folder where no one will see it, and launch everything when it's finished (using some 301's just in case), or bust your butt getting it all done asap.

Not sure EXACTLY what you're doing, but on the surface, it sounds like the iframes could come back and bite you in the butt. And by that, I mean 'overall proper operation of the site and usability'.

There's nothing worse than having a user get weird errors like 'page not found', all because you forgot to go back and change some settings to not use the iframes anymore.

The page names would not change, but there would be more internal pages added linking to that one page.

I used the iframe because I could not get some functions to work with the database on another site, but now have learned how to some what link these things together (at least the parts that I need)

in my experience:

Page X had an iframe to page Y. No links to page Y anywhere on the net.

Page Y got indexed, Page X didn't.

griffinsbridge wrote:

in my experience:

Page X had an iframe to page Y. No links to page Y anywhere on the net.

Page Y got indexed, Page X didn't.

Now its coming back to me... that's one of the big problems with iframes, because there is a main page with the necessary doctype, meta tags, title and all other important elements with another page inside it with all those elements again it causes confusion within the search engines. The more pages you have linked within that iframe the more likely you are to get none of them indexed. If you are unlucky the SE will only index the main page with no regard to whats in the iframes... then none of your content is worth squat as far as serps go. Or at least that's similar to what i recall reading before i made my first site and thought an iframe was a great idea (before i knew how to make a stylesheet to control the layout of an entire website... for a while i did go from page to page making the same change repeatedly

Then again, some sites with iframes do really well... im still sticking to the "why take a silly risk and waste the effort" stance though.

Ok, This is my problem.  I have a reseller account at godaddy, but they only allow you to use their goofy template or links to it(Unless you have one of those accounts where you keep a Thousand or so dollars in it).  I tried to recreate everything including the domain search and the links to the billing pages. (I was in the mood for a total change on this site) I most definitley recreated everything except that the cart won't work (can't recreate that "Personal Code") and none of the forms will work.  What I did do was create a page for every single page they have and put it in an iframe.  Not completely done with it but at least it has less clicks to get to the services.
Thanks for everyone's help with this.  (I went from blues to autumn colors but my husband says at least I'm not moving furniture in the house, cause I do tend to do that when I'm in the mood for a change.)