Re: Displaying product pictures (frames or new windows?)

> It's true (as far as I know) that most search engines will not index
> individual frames
>
> >You won't get indexed or spidered
>
> In my experience however, the above statement is not always true.
>
> > They ban framed sites.
>
> My site uses frames.  It's listed in many search engines/catalogues,
including  Yahoo (which accounts for about 80% of the search engine hits to
my site).
> Maybe I was lucky?


Agree somewhat, however they are not a Search Engine and if you tell them
they are they get mad.  Yahoo is a Directory.  They use people to look at
sites, not computers.  The idealogy is different.  If most of your business
comes from Yahoo, you proved my point.  You're not doing well with Search
Engines.

Search Engines spider your site and they do not deal with frames as a
general rule.  This means if your site is of any size, the individual pages
will not get listed.  This is important.

Lets say you sell car parts as an example.  Individual pages for items like
spark plugs, air filters, tire irons or whatever will not be indexed for a
frame site if you get listed at all with SE's.  People searching for these
items by name from the SE's won't find your site while searching for these
individual items.  There is a reason.

Your sites meta tags will be lost in the backwash of the other 200 websites
selling car parts using a meta tag line of 800 characters on the home page.
How can you distinguish yourself from the others?   How can you direct
people directly to the page they want?  Don't you get upset when you surf
for something and get misled by links and end up visiting 20 websites before
you find what you want?  You only find it on that site after clicking around
for twenty minutes?  We ALL have had that experience.

The original bunch of reasons from Jim Tom Polk about not using frames are
still relevant. Frames are a pain to work with, they don''t allow saving a
link, they confuse back and forward buttons a lot, some people get confused
by them particularly when they use six frames for a page and the site was
designed for 1024 X 768.  Need I go on?

Frames hurt business and confuse the search engines.  Some websites go to
the extra effort of creating a non-frame website.  Not all browsers are
frame compatible.  You could improve your business by having an alternate
non-frame version or by getting rid of frames altogether.

As I said before, I don't do frames as a general rule and won't even discuss
it with customers.  Personal experience is a good teacher as I said before.
If a customer wants frames, they want someone else.  Life is too short.  I
find that people that give me absolutes like "thou shalt use frames" are
going to be a pain anyway.

Paul Wilson
webgooru(at)gte.net

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