Social widgets, iFrames, Duplicate content and more...

[NoorHammad]

Hi guys,

I am thinking about embedding a widget on my website that pulls social content from a number of networks.

The script (javascript) creates and iFrame and serves up social content which is embedded in an external page ie:

Tweet --> embedded on widget-domain.com/page.html --> embedded on my-domain.com via an iFrame.

Questions:

1. Will this carry any SEO benefit? Will Google see this as "fresh + frequent" content?
2. Will this carry any SEO penalties? Will Google see this as duplicate content?

I hope thats enough info to get some feedback - let me know if I can provide any more.

[MonicaOConnor]

If all you can see in the source code is the widget, then that is all that the bots will see. If this widget is helpful for your searchers, then that will be the benefit. Google will only see that there is a widget on your site. It will not see any content that isn't in the source code. If you want the content to be seen, an RSS feed might be a better option.

[RyanPurkey]

As Monica mentions, this is questionable as to whether or not it'll be seen as content on your page, since it's embedded in an iFrame. Here's Google's take on it: "Pages that use frames or iframes display several URLs (one for each frame) within a single page. Google tries to associate framed content with the page containing the frames, but we don't guarantee that we will." From: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34445.

There's not much of a worry about duplicate content with this practice, and many white hat, legitimate websites import comments and twitter feeds. The only cautions on penalties would be the standard, "avoid bad neighborhoods" or spammy social profiles in your comment stream.  Cheers!

[NoorHammad]

Thanks Monica and Ryan.

My takeaways are that Google may or may not attribute iFrame content to the page its embedded on.

Assuming that it does, then normal content quality rules apply.

It's unlikely that duplicate content penalties will apply with embedded social content as Googlebot is smart enough to figure this as a legitimate source of embeddable content.

[MonicaOConnor]

That is correct