I have been looking at various ways to add product feeds to my various websites and blogs and noted one method uses iFrames, rather than placing the code for the actual products on our sites.
As such I did a quick search to see how using iFrames this way (as I’d be using a LOT) might affect our own sites re page rank, seo and such and came up with the following article
“IFrames are sometimes used to display content on web pages. Content displayed via iFrames may not be indexed and available to appear in Google’s search results. We recommend that you avoid the use of iFrames to display content. If you do include iFrames, make sure to provide additional text-based links to the content they display , so that Googlebot can crawl and index this content.”
What are your thoughts on this? Is it a case of weighing up pros and cons?
I have been using Zazzleaffiliatehelper/ which I’m 90% happy with. It’s a good free option. NO iframes, just html code. But I would like to see prices, and be able to reduce font size.change color and a few other bits and bobs.
Anyone have ideas re other things that can be used that do NOT use iFrames?
Zazzle no longer allows embedding their pages on other sites. If you try, you get a message like this in Firefox
To protect your security, www.zazzle.com will not allow Firefox to display the page if another site has embedded it. To see this page, you need to open it in a new window.
I learned this a while back because I used to use whatismyscreenresolution.net to see how my store banner and such looked at different device resolutions/sizes but a year or so ago, maybe longer, it stopped working because of this change on Zazzle’s end.
This isn’t what I meant, though I appreciate your reply. This is an iframe created by another site (3rd party) that for free or for a price creates a ‘shop front’ so to speak for our products or those of others for our own websites. I was giving it a go and happened to notice the code was ‘iframe’. I only noticed because I am familiar with iframes, hence I looked up the details re it.
Back in 2019 I asked about iframes and a mod (Monica, I think… ) told me that Zazzle discouraged iframes. Fine Art America still has a stand alone shopping cart widget that uses the iframe format and I haven’t heard of them having any issues with it.
This isn’t anything to do with Zazzle iframes - it is a 3rd party who designs Zazzle promotional tools. There are a few out there, who offer free or for sale tools re product feeds. it just so happens I noticed the code was iframe. In other words the site of origin will be that 3rd party site (not Zazzle).
I didn’t communicate well, my fault. I did ask them about me using a 3rd party iframe to display my Zazzle store on my Weebly site and the reason I asked is because I couldn’t get the code to pull from the RSS feed. That is when the mod told me that Zazzle discouraged the use of that kind of code. That is also about the time that I started using Nifty Grids instead because they are pure HTML code. But still, The FAA site manager just the other day in their forums recommended the iframe widget to a blogger. She is pretty tech savvy and it seems like if there was a problen with Google she wouldn’t recommend an iframe. ? that is why I mentioned that. 🙂
Your original post, you ruled out using iFrames for SEO reasons. Good advice. I was just adding an FYI that they won’t work for Zazzle content anyway as they no longer allow embedding.
I don’t think there is any real drawback to iframes in that situation. The way I understand, your page/blog isn’t getting demerits from Google for using an iframe, it’s just that any keywords in the embedded content isn’t going to do your own page any good. If you’re writing good searchable content for your page/blog post and then use an iframe to easily show a collection of the products you’re writing about which happen to live somewhere else, I see no harm no foul as your goal is to get people to those products. If someone is searching for, I don’t know, “groovy vintage low budget wedding invites”, they might find the products directly on their home site or they might find your page/blog where you’ve written about them and used an iframe to link to them. And that’s really all an iframe is - a link to somewhere else but with an interactive preview of the content. When you include a link on your webpage/blog you never benefit from whatever SEO power the thing you linked to contains; you’re just providing a link to that other thing. If you built a site relying on embedded content you’d never get anywhere as Google searches would turn up the original pages not yours where it’s just embedded/linked to. But if you’re writing your own good content and just using iframes as a convenient “visual link” I don’t see a problem.
It was the nifty site, the iframe code came from. It was the free version I’m not sure if the paid is the same.
I don’t know who FAA is, but iframes are generally not great for sites seo from what I learned today. BUT I am still looking into it, as I really need something that offers more than what I am using presently.
yes, this is what I was wondering… it’s a pros and cons thing. What we lose and what we gain from having them. As long as there is sufficient content. That said, I feel I need to do more research before I am comfortable using them. I am redoing all my sites again and I want to get it right this time, or I’ll have to redo them all again at a later date.
I see lots of Zazzler’s using them .. so it’s just me being extra cautious.
In mid January this year, Google (and only Google) introduced a new robots tag: indexifembedded. Nifty’s Product Grid Sharer page uses that tag, meaning that any product grids embedded via iframes in your blogs / websites (using the code snippet you get at the bottom of the sharer page) WILL be indexed by Google.
I’ve created a page on NiftyToolz that embeds a product grid using the iframe code and a Google search demonstrates that the page has been indexed, product grid content included.
Use this search on Google to confirm for yourself:
4th of July Independence Day BBQ Invitations and more site:niftytoolz.com
You need to include the site:niftytoolz.com to make sure you don’t have to wade through lots of results to see it.
I hope that puts your mind at rest. If you have questions, just reply and I’ll do my best to answer them
Leah, just happened to stumble on your post and “…Anyone have ideas re other things that can be used that do NOT use iFrames?”
Check out www.z-feed.com I dropped it on my site and products get displayed based on your Store Id or Collection. I even added a Search bar that searches within my Store.
