Self Referencing Framesets
Links from search engines are, functionally, no different to links from any other site. That is to say that if other sites have trouble linking to framed pages on a Web site, then so will search engines. Search engine spiders have two choices when they encounter a <FRAMESET>
- Do not crawl the frames in the frameset - in this case, entire framed sites will be excluded from the search engine's index unless there is a frameless version of the site.
- Crawl the frames in the frameset - in this case, the search engine will create links to the framed pages, and they will be seen out of context (e.g. without branding and navigation) which can result in confusion for visitors from search engines.
Many techniques have been proposed for dealing with the issues surrounding rebuilding the framed context. Two such techniques are:
| Technique | Problem |
|---|---|
| Use JavaScript to automatically redirect back to the frameset page | An auto-redirect to the frameset page will often mean that information that the searcher is looking for is not on the page they are redirected to. This is akin to spam. |
| Put a link on the framed page back to the frameset page for people to follow | A link on the framed page to the frameset page will appear even when the page is displayed in the frameset. |
In other words, these techniques are problematic. They can result in confusion for visitors to the site.
A further problem with framed sites and search engines is link popularity. This factor is being used more and more by search engines (notably Google) to evaluate the relevancy of a page. With framed sites, links can only be made to the frameset page, which can give great link popularity to that page. But the frameset page often contains very little text to take advantage of that link popularity, hence it does not do too well in searches. It is the framed pages that contain the text, but their link popularity is much lower than the frameset page they inherit it from, so they do not do too well in searches either!
So, we want a technique that solves all the problems we have listed:
- Lists the URL of the current content frame, increasing viral marketing opportunities
- Allows bookmarking of any content frame on the framed site, increasing bookmarking opportunities
- Allows hyperlinking to any content frame on the framed site, increasing traffic from other sites and (through increased link popularity) search engines
We have developed such a technique - we call it the self-referencing frameset.