What is the current thought how/if cufon affects keywords?

[Court_LOQUA]

What is the final opinion about how (and if) cufon affects keywords in H1 tags?

[RDK]

While I doubt you'll be unearthing a final opinion on anything here, I'll add to the chorus:  it is SEO friendly- it's javascript.  If you intend to ignore the legal implications and the load-time drawback, you're in business!

As it turns out, I feel dissatisfied in joining the chorus.  I think it's obvious that there's only one thing we can do now...

Time for a TYPOGRAPHY CAGE MATCH!

Cufón v. sIFR v. @font-face

[Court_LOQUA]

Legal implications--are you talking about copyrights of the original font typographer?

[JustinWalmsley]

Are there any hard stats anywhere regarding sIFR, Cufon or @Font-Face or even Google-Fonts now?

I would have expected that sIFR does have a negative impact on a website due to a number of factors:

1. Page speed, sIFR does load slower than the other font replacement techniques
2. User engagement, sIFR therefore h1/h2 tags etc will not be shown on mobile (iPhone/iPad) devices, if a user comes to a page and cannot see any primary headings, then surely you would see higher bounce/exit rates.
3. Similar to point 2, as you can't hyper link using sIFR, then potential primary CTA's might not work for users, again creating rubbish user engagement.

I'd be really interested in seeing others responses to this.

Hopefully I'm pitching to a new client within the next few weeks, and I will be advising that we change from sIFR to a more (what I believe to be) SEO friendly font replacement technique. If i do win them, I'll see what I can track and repost!