How bad are frames?

My site uses exit popups and we usually put this exit popup in a top frame of size 1 x 1.... Now I know frames are bad for search engines so how much does this affect it?

example: www.attractsexywomen.com

Popups and frames in themselves don't harm your site (unless it's to stop visitors returning - I for one hate exit popups!), but they have to be handled with care. Try looking at the source code for your index page and you'll see what I mean ... not a lot of spider food in there is there? Now, check Google's cache of your page - not pretty is it?

Use external js files and NOFRAMES tags and you'll do much better.

Gringo.

Even then however if you can drop the frames do so. It is no coincidence that even well optimized farame sites struggle to get top 10. Also although Google handles spidering of framed pages reasonably well, other engines don't. There are more reasons you can shake a stick at for why Frames are bad for usability & SEO. If you can live without them, do so.

you can use iframe this will not effect your site

what is the code for iframe

<iframe src="page_name.html" name="xxxx" width="xxx(px/%)" height="xxx(px/%)" align="default">

How would i incorporate this? would this need to be on each page of my website? for example on the example i gave above.

On the page you've given, you don't need to use frames at all, iframe or normal frames.

Gringo.

Frames can and are botted

I have a number of frame pages in the top three for various search phrases

Frames suck

;-)

Depends how you use them

You can get high rankings with frames, but I agree with Webby, you can never fully optimise a page with frames. Maybe you get top rankings for a particular search term, but if you take out the frames you're sure to get more traffic (either from other SE's or for totally different search terms).

By the way, top ranking for a 3-word search term isn't a particularly difficult task, as long as that 3-word search term isn't immensely popular of course.

Gringo.

What your saying then is that the whole site should be frameless?

If that is the case how do you do comparative displays with eg one boat in one frame and another in another frame and a contents list to change the sample selected.

iframes or css layers.
In fact nowadays the css method of switching with a mouse click content or comparisons as you mention, is the most popular way to do this.
<soapbox>
I do not believe there is any justification to use Framesets nowadays apart from major database dependant shopping portals, perhaps</soapbox>

Two urls worth reading on Frames vs. CSS are
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html
and
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/styles_vs_frames.html

Thanks Webby

I have read with interest the CSS version (we already use iframes extensively but have come up against naming targeting problems in certain browsers) as I am in the process of changing all of our sites across to CSS but it still doesn't address the problems.

What is interesting though is that Alertbox puts forward the principle of the navigation to individual pages - pages are king - and I accept that as I use every page as an entry point, but what I do find difficulty with is that he only gudglingly accepts that frames do have a place used correctly but doesn't accept that if people use js similar browser problems can occur as it interrupts the linkage within pages