Why Do Search Engines Hate Frames?

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Please be warned: The next lines will get quite technical. If you're not HTML-savvy and don't want to know about framesets and frames, simply apply the following simple rule: If you want to be listed in search engines to ensure higher traffic to your web site, don't use frames. Unfortunately, not using frames does not ensure being listed, but that's another story.

Frames can confound the search engines as well as visitors

To explain the inherent problems associated with frames, we will use the following example: A web site's home page uses frames. The upper frame represents the navigation bar, the lower frame the content (a typical setup). When the user clicks on a link located in the lower frame; the lower frame will be updated, while the upper frame will stay unchanged.

This looks all too familiar, as many sites use this technique. The problem will get very evident as soon as you try to bookmark the second web page (frames A and C). Apparently, both web pages (A/B and A/C) have the same URL (http:// www.site.com/). If you type that URL into your browser, you will get the first web page (frames A and B), but not the second one; there is no URL for the second web page (frames A and C).

This is one of the main reasons why search engines don't like frames: For most of the web pages that "human users" might be viewing in their browser by clicking around and following links, there simply is no URL (in our example: there is no URL for frames A/C) - and unfortunately search engines need a URL for every web page in their index.

One could argue that search engines could index single frames (A, B, C) instead of whole framesets. Actually, some search engines index framesets this way. But this varies from search engine to search engine.

Frames can be easily replaced

Thus, to make sure that search engines can index your site you should avoid frames. In most cases the same web design can be achieved by using HTML tables, so, by thinking ahead, there usually isn't even a compelling reason for using frames.

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