does iframes hurt your ranking at google
 

The title says it all.
any ideas?

Avoid them if you can.

It depends on what you're doing. If it's an inline ad that doesn't affect spidering, I haven't found it to be an issue.

spiders don't like iframes

100% iframes are a no-no.. ANY iframes, though? no.. there are tons of legitimate uses for them.. like ads.

but bear in mind, typically ad serving stuff uses javascript to insert it's iframes.. and if you look at google adsense's source code, you'll notice they have gone to some (albeit simple) lengths to hide the "iframe" string from spiders.

makes you wonder...

also keep in mind that the contents of the iframe, (the iframe 'src') is going to be pretty much treated as a completely separate page. if you must use them, you're better off hiding it from the engines with javascript or cloaking and not relying on it to get spidered.

best scenario is to avoid them altogether, unless it's for ads.

Just use the NOFRAMES Tag, you'll be fine.

We use iframes as part of our tracking system for our link partner's page, check out www.penilefitness.com/links/

let me know what ya think :winkwink:

i use an iframe to load one page on my site and it gets plently of google traffic :)
i was told dont use it but it does

Hey OA, we need to swap links! www.penilefitness.com/links/ :thumbsup

Can't you just use an appropriately CSS'd div tag with an "overflow" attribute set to how you want to bypass using an iframe in some instances - like if you want to include a scrolling element of text?

sounds like a plan :thumbsup