JavaScript Re-Directs The Bots WONT Follow

Hi Guys :-)

Wondered if anyone new which script to use to stop Google from following re-direct's in page headers.

I have a site containing iframes and other pages that I want the search engine bots to read. Some of these are core iframes, plain html text etc. When the user comes to these pages with his or her browser I want to jump them to the media rich (some flash, other 100% flash) site pages. However I want google and other bots to read the SEO optimized HTML on the other pages.

I am currently using a script that I use for keeping iframes in context (if page is _top then redirect etc), but I am not sure if Google will follow these re-directs and mess up the whole procedure.

Any ideas ?

Sounds dodgy. What you're describing is called cloaking and is frowned upon by search engines. You should always display the same content to search engines as you do to normal users.

It is the same content.

Some of it is very media rich flash with moving pictures multiple scenes loaders etc. Heavy design several iframes. NOT SEO Style

The other pages are HTML plain text version of those pages. Optimized by use of simple DOCTYPE, Text Rich HTML.

I want the users to get the full monty and the seach engines to get the full monty. As the search engines dont need to see how cool it looks :-)

Search engines don't need to see how cool it looks, but they WILL penalize you for doing it the way you've described.

My suggestion is that I'd use something like Javascripts "noscript" tags to include the textual elements to be shown when there's no support for the other rich media elements. I don't know the tags off the top of my head, but I know that they are out there.

The best thing about this is that if you get a real user that stumbles across your site but doesn't have a Flash (or whatever you use) plug in installed, or a user that's blind or vision impaired, they'll still get the full experience too.

Well thanks for pointing me in the right direction anywayz. :-)
My previous searches on this technique without knowing what it was called lead to very little.

I am concerned that the Internet becomes overly technical and visually boring. Unless we are committed to flash and graphic delivery, and designers design.

For me these techniques are "designed" to deliver great looking websites but still allow the users the chance to compete on search engine rankings.

It seems the more people I talk to, the more there are that understand this, but also that there is a growing amount who believe its some kind of "deception". Which it really isnt.

There is absolutely no point in using it to deceive it defeats the purpose. If you rank high on a search for "red wine" and then deliver a rich graphical site for lovers of "white wine"..how much red wine will you sell?

I understand your point, and I agree completely. Sites do need to "stand out" these days in order to be taken over some other site.

Having said that, it's only the good sites that are doing this. The problems occur when the "bad" sites use cloaking, redirections, etc, in order to fool people into visiting to get them to click on the adds on the page, or whatever other money-raising technique that they are trying to use. These are the ones that the SE's are trying to flush out, but unfortunately, the techniques used by these bad sites are the same ones that can be used by good sites for very different reasons.

For the bad sites it's all about numbers. A good site will prefer to get 5 real visitors that are interested in what is on the page, but a bad site would much prefer 50,000 visitors that don't want to be there, but still give them a 1-5% click-through rate on the advertising to get away.

I do agree to a degree but sites need to be useable. 50% of people leave statisically after 2.5 clicks and go to a competitor. Not because the competitor is any better because they probably are not but because the site is useable. Gimics = lost visitors. The top adult toy shop in the states is christian but looks like poop. However as it's christian based it gets the most trafic why? usable for christians. it also has very little gimics, graphics and is covered in chistian quotes from the bible.

Also no script as in
<noscript>
text goes in here
</noscript>
is classed as hidden text and is devalued as such.

What you need to do is provide a html version page and block the flash based page via robots.txt and meta noindex.

Why?
The robots will read the text version and if you place a text link as the first html output you are not doing anything wrong. This lets screen readers access your site as flash based sites are usless to them and they hit the link first but also provides people with slow conections or people who simply don't like flash pages to view the html version. As the link is visable to everyone so you are not doing anything wrong.

If you really want your flash version to come first when people view your site simply test to see if the http refferer is set if it is not redirect to your flash version if it is they have chosen to view your html site and not your flash based site you took ages doing.

Based of both worlds

duplicate post can a mod remove cheers