I've Been Framed -- Is this a Bad Thing?

I’ve Been Framed – Is this a Bad Thing?

Framing is the technique of loading new information into a web page that is currently open. When a link is clicked, instead of the entire page disappearing and the new page loading, only a portion of the page disappears, and the new information is loaded within this “frame”.

Technically, using a frame is like using two browser windows. The url for the non-framed portion is displayed in the browser window, but a separate window is used for the framed content.

Frames are more or less transparent to the average user. The frame itself does not need to be included in an actual outline that can be seen by users. All users know if that when they click on a link only a portion of the page disappears and is re-loaded.

Frames are popular with users because the portion of the web page not in the frame, typically the header, navigational buttons, and header do not need to be re-loaded, as would be the case if a frame was not used. Because only the new information needs to be loaded into the frame while the non-framed information remains, the time required to display the requested information from the link is much shorter than if the entire page would have had to be reloaded.

Historically, search engine robots (“bots”) that “crawl” or “spider” a web page could not read the content that was included in a frame. Essentially the “bot” would spider the content on a page, but would not have the ability to “see” the content included within the frame, although users could see the content fine.

Website designers than had to make a choice between using frames for a better user experience at the expense of not having the content show up in search engines, or creating “static” pages for each link, which is more cumbersome.

Now, however, as posted on Google’s website

Google supports frames to the extent that it can. Frames can cause problems for search engines because they don't correspond to the conceptual model of the web. In this model, one page displays only one URL. Pages that use frames display several URLs (one for each frame) within a single page. If Google determines that a user's query matches the page as a whole, it will return the entire frame set. However, if the user's query matches an individual frame within the larger frame set, Google returns only the relevant frame. In this case, the entire frame set of the page will not appear.

So while Google now can frames, if a page is part of the frameset, only the individual page will be pulled up in the search result. So a page that only makes sense as part of a frameset will appear on its own when a user clicks on the search result link.

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