Just a few weeks ago I happened to check my Aurora IL real estate website out in MSN and lo and behold, I found that the search engine was actually pulling in part of my IFRAMES not compatible text to build the description. When using IFRAMEs it’s common practice to include a blurb of text for browsers that may not be able to property display IFRAMES. In many cases, webmasters place something like, “If you’re seeing this your browser is not compatible with IFRAMES”. For browsers that can display IFRAMES correctly, that text is never seen, however, to a search engine, that text forms a visible part of your page.

If you are using IFRAMES, make sure you check your alt text. If it’s close to the top of the page, search engines might actually be reading that text as part of your page description. Also, if you use IFRAMES in different pages throughout your site, as I do for my seperate regional real estate sites like Geneva real estate or Batavia real estate make sure to vary the alt text from page to page to avoid problems with possible duplicate content.