SEO and PDFs

[Vithe]

The company I work for are about to upload a shedload of pdfs to the website and I would like them to be as optimised as possible. I've never gone about optimising pdfs before though.

I did search on this forum before posting but couldn't find any information about this topic at all.

I have a couple of questions which I hope you can help me answer:

Firstly, does Google read and rank pdfs pretty well?

Secondly, what are your best pdf optimisation tips?

Many thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Vithe

Firstly, does Google read and rank pdfs pretty well?

I don't thing GoogleBOT is able to read PDF documents (that would imply OCR like scanning ability).

The ranking is another question based on citations / references / that translates to IBL's in WWW.

Originally Posted by Vithe

Secondly, what are your best pdf optimisation tips?

Write quality documents that other people link to with different anchor text.

Other members may say, submit, write about your documents etc. etc.

As always it is a question about semantics and context. Write and link where it is natural and useful for the surfer. Finding your own niche may be important.

[Dubbya]

As long as the PDF is rastorized (flattened) to an image and the text is embedded, it's pretty much a cinch.

There are a few caveats though. If you save out a PDF and apply security preferences to it, the contents are encrypted and can't be read by the Search Engines.

If it doesn't matter that the end user can copy text or print the page, don't lock it up.

Here are a couple of articles of interest:

SEO Your PDF's - Does This Work?

Optimizing PDFs for SEO

Good Luck!

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Dubbya

SEO Your PDF's - Does This Work?

"Can the search engines read PDF files?

Yes, most of the major search engines now can read the basic contents of PDF files, though getting these pages to rank as well as HTML files is still questionable".

New to me.

[Dubbya]

Originally Posted by kgun

New to me.

We've all been seeing PDF's and content snippets listed alongside web pages in the SERPs for some time, so it would only stand to reason that the PDF files are being spidered and indexed as well.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Dubbya

We've all been seeing PDF's and content snippets listed alongside web pages in the SERPs for some time, ...

1. Spidered is different from being indexed.
2. PDF files have been indexed for a long time. I thought that was based on IBL's only.

Originally Posted by Dubbya

... so it would only stand to reason that the PDF files are being spidered and indexed as well.

So it is based on opinions and not on facts Dubbya?

Natural search term:

does googlebot spider pdf documents site:google.com

[Peter]

Google does rank the PDF pages, however it is very useful to input all those optional fields under File -> Properties to help placement, so you need to use Acrobat or a full fledged PDF editor rather than just a PDF writer.

For a product specific search term with 453k results, our PDF page ranks 14th on Google and the HTML is listed underneath it. It might rank higher if we had a better page title..

The quality of copy etc I believe still applies, along with the basics of keywords.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Peter

Google does rank the PDF pages,

Based on spidered file content is my question.

Originally Posted by Peter

however it is very useful to input all those optional fields under File -> Properties to help placement, so you need to use Acrobat or a full fledged PDF editor rather than just a PDF writer.

I have the 2007 professional version of Acrobat Reader. That is a possibility to describe the subject and give keywords etc.

I looked at some of the above hits that I suggested in my search term and could not find an article on Google.com that said that GoogleBot is able to scan PDF documents and rank content based on such a scanning.

[seomagician]

They definitely rank. I have a client that had several pdf files that had pretty high rankings. I actually spent time replacing those rankings with other html pages. The reason? The files were too big. It took forever to download them and people just bounced off the site. The moral of the story for me is to create pdf files that have a pretty fast download.

[Psychobel]

I would tend to put the content in flat HTML pages and have a .pdf hanging off that for download if required.
Why?
HTML pages have your navigation around them and the opportunity to place calls to action. And you know HTML gets indexed and ranked

[innominds]

Sorry for being against the topic. What should one do if PDF's are not to be indexed? Do zipping a file will help it?

[sck4784]

Search engines can crawl & index PDF files. For optimizing PDF files few point are worth considering.

1. Use keywords enrich contents in the PDF file.

2. Proper use of <H1><b><I> should be in the PDF file.

3. Targeted keywords should be included in the page urls.

4. Use Acrobat 6.0 or above version for creating PDF files.

5. Dont use too much graphics/images in PDF files.

6. Keep PDF files length as less as possible.

These are some tips from my side.

[NetProwler]

@innominds:

When you are creating/saving your pdf file - select the security tab from the application you are using and select the 'Encrypt the PDF document' option which will prompt you for a password. Your saved file can't be indexed by any search engine.

[Pico_Train]

I just searched for an arbitrary PDF file on the web. I took a snippet of text from it and searched for that snippet in "" in Google. The document was found.

Many PDF files are offered as HTML. Does that not imply that Google can read them?

I think they can. They don't rank as well in my opinion for reasons I don't understand or can explain. Just an opinion there. They do rank though.

I will write pdf file and link to it from one of my sites. Put arbitrary content in it and see what happens as an experiment because it could be useful in the future. Oh and just to get KGUN to be a bit less confrontational in the future -

[ericajoieake]

nowadays google can crawl pdf files and get rank

[dburdon]

Google has been reading and ranking pdf's for years.

Optimising for a pdf is the same as optimising for any other form of document. Think target market, do keyword research, build keywords into content, build content into meta tags.

I've got a 2005 pdf document out there that still - rather embarrassingly - ranks highly.

[m-chapman]

PDFs can be optimised and do rank. I am just reviewing the rankings report for one of our clients. This firm publishes a regular newsletter that we re-save in Adobe Acrobat with title, description, keyword tags. Links can be added to the text in the document.

How well does it work? Currently, this client has several PDFs on page 1 and many others in the top 50 results.

mark chapman.

[nickoran]

Originally Posted by sck4784

Search engines can crawl & index PDF files. For optimizing PDF files few point are worth considering.

1. Use keywords enrich contents in the PDF file.

2. Proper use of <H1><b><I> should be in the PDF file.

3. Targeted keywords should be included in the page urls.

4. Use Acrobat 6.0 or above version for creating PDF files.

5. Dont use too much graphics/images in PDF files.

6. Keep PDF files length as less as possible.

These are some tips from my side.

Really handy to know, thanks!

[loosapphire]

Firstly, does Google read and rank pdfs pretty well?

Yes, most of the major search engines now can read the basic contents of PDF files, though getting these pages to rank as well as HTML files is still questionable.


Secondly, what are your best pdf optimisation tips?The simple answer is, yes. The title tag and body copy can still be optimized and the major search engines will index it accordingly. As far as the Keywords and Description meta tags, well Google ignores this in PDF’s just as it does in HTML documents and Yahoo!, which does use the description tag, is only half way to where it needs to be.

[Clarrie]

We run a site for a client that has a lot of PDF White Paper downloads. All the main search engines, including Google can index PDFs.

Google doesn't really seem to give them as much priority in SERPS as HTML - they mostly come up in the results for longer tail / very topic specific searches, but they do still get returned some of the time.

This site also has Google site search in it, and the PDFs routinely show in the results.

Personally I don't think Google has put the same sort of effort into analysing / indexing PDF format with a view to ranking, or maybe PDFs don't tend to get a much Page Rank - probably fewer links etc.

Have found that Live and Yahoo tend to show PDFs more often - I'd say Live are currently the best at being able to deliver relevant PDFs in results.

Originally Posted by seomagician

They definitely rank. I have a client that had several pdf files that had pretty high rankings. I actually spent time replacing those rankings with other html pages. The reason? The files were too big. It took forever to download them and people just bounced off the site. The moral of the story for me is to create pdf files that have a pretty fast download.

The way we get round that is to have an HTML intro page - this has an Abstract and / or outline of the content in the PDF together with other relevant data, and a download button link to the PDF.

[Vithe]

Many thanks for all the replies. By the looks of the webpages I had been looking at before posting, it seems that this topic had been overlooked for a while - nice to get a fresh view on it.

Thanks for the optimisation tips too, very useful and I will definitely be putting them into practice!

Edit: just seen Clarrie's post. That format was exactly what I had planned - a list of optimised intro snippets on one page with the PDFs all linked off.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Pico_Train

I just searched for an arbitrary PDF file on the web. I took a snippet of text from it and searched for that snippet in "" in Google. The document was found.

Give us the proof please.

That is no proof that PDF documents are crawled by GoogleBOT.

1. Can anybody explain why?
2. Why is it difficult to find information / evidence on Google's own site?

Originally Posted by Pico_Train

I will write pdf file and link to it from one of my sites. Put arbitrary content in it and see what happens as an experiment because it could be useful in the future. Oh and just to get KGUN to be a bit less confrontational in the future -

I have still not got a good enough answer. Show me a cite from Google's official site please, not their blogs, groups or third party sites. There is enough speculation and opinions on the internet. So long this thread is a good example.

[gavinscott]

From a user point of view I find pdfs frustrating; on my set-up (Mac Tiger/Safari) there's around a 50/50 success rate for them loading within the browser (I often have to download them first and then open them in Acrobat), and when they do work they load very slowly. Yes this maybe a browser issue, but there are many Safari users out there.

It doesn't matter what Google thinks if your visitors are put off by slow load times or documents failing to load altogether. If it is too great a task to convert all the documents to HTML it might be worth offering the first page of each in HTML with a link to the full document so your visitors know it's worth the trouble.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by gavinscott

It doesn't matter what Google thinks if your visitors are put off by slow load times or documents failing to load altogether. If it is too great a task to convert all the documents to HTML it might be worth offering the first page of each in HTML with a link to the full document so your visitors know it's worth the trouble.

That is one good example why you find the same key words in a PDF documents as in a search query.

[wacjr66]

Did a test, searched for...Impact of Managed Care in
the Developmental Disabilities Sector... and PDFs come up peppered throughout the SERPs. Looks like copy is cited and Google gives the option to view the PDF as HTML. Don't know if this would prove that some level of "spidering" occurs.

Some of our clients have successful, high level traffic for their PDFs. We do encourage them to develop HTML instead of, or in addition as support, the PDFs. IMO HTML equivalents will fair better in results.

[kgun]

I googled:

Impact of Managed Care in the Developmental Disabilities Sector

Result HTML document starting like this:

Ten Dimensions of Public-Sector Managed Care

Michael A. Hoge, Ph.D., Selby Jacobs, M.D., Neil M. Thakur, M.Phil. and Ezra E.H. Griffith, M.D.

First hit:

Ten Dimensions of Public-Sector Managed Care -- Hoge et al. 50 (1): 51 -- Psychiatr Serv

Second hit:

http://psychservices.psychiatryonlin...nt/50/1/51.pdf

Do you see any similarities?

<quote>
Looks like copy is cited and Google gives the option to view the PDF as HTML. Don't know if this would prove that some level of "spidering" occurs.
</quote>
My bolding.

At least not the above example.

This example comes under the same category as that mentioned in my above post.

I am sure that there are much more complex examples if text from a PDF document is written on n other sites on the internet. Do you find that likely?

Can

<link rel="Canonical" href="http://www.yourdomain.com">

prevent it? No it can not, since the (stolen / duplicated) HTML document can rank higher as "the original document" (especially if the PDF version can not be spidered). So long I have seen no proof that it can.

[chrisJumbo]

I suggested the search and pulled up this link:
NLCDD Policy Insights Bulletin (March 2009).pub

At the top of the page, Google inserted a message that it automatically creates HTML versions of PDF documents that it crawls. That should be enough proof.

However, the PDF version loaded so much slower and I believe users would appreciate having an HTML version more. Also, as others noted, the HTML version can you have your navigation which I also believe gives the user a better experience. Especially when it comes to a search. If you open the PDf from the search it is much more difficult to get to the home page or other pages on the site.

cd :O)

[kgun]

Originally Posted by chrisJumbo

At the top of the page, Google inserted a message that it automatically creates HTML versions of PDF documents that it crawls. That should be enough proof.

My bolding. Proof to whom?

<quote>
This is the html version of the file http://www.nasddds.org/pdf/PolicyInsightsBulletin(March2009).pdf.
Google automatically generates html versions of documents as we crawl the web.
</quote>
Where are these documents placed?

I use Opera's principle and do not rely on any site on the internet. Do you rely on the above?

Compare the hits:

Google automatically generates html versions of documents as we crawl the web

Google automatically generates html versions of documents as we crawl the web site:google.com

Do you find any proof on google.com?

[Peter]

Does this link help answer it?

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: First date with the Googlebot: Headers and compression

In there is some text

Googlebot: Website, let me give a bit more background. After actually downloading a file, I use the Content-Type header to check whether it really is HTML, an image, text, or something else. If it's a special data type like a PDF file, Word document, or Excel spreadsheet, I'll make sure it's in the valid format and extract the text content. Maybe it has a virus; you never know. If the document or data type is really garbled, there's usually not much to do besides discard the content.

My understanding is that Googlebot visits a site, and crawls all the links for file types, it then decides to look at particular types of files that claim to be of a type, the Googlebot then interrogates the file further looking at the content and then decides on the algorithim how to rank or include in the index.

Is this what you are looking for Kgun? or am i missing the point again?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Peter

My understanding is that Googlebot visits a site, and crawls all the links for file types, it then decides to look at particular types of files that claim to be of a type, the Googlebot then interrogates the file further looking at the content and then decides on the algorithim how to rank or include in the index.

Very interesting if that is correct.

Originally Posted by Peter

Is this what you are looking for Kgun? or am i missing the point again?

No, reread my above posts. I look for evidence from google.com.

I have seen enough nonsense from informal Google sites. Here is an example:

AdSense: Support bad without responsibility?

More precisely here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/...c9227b77&hl=en

That is even from the Google.com forum. The people participating there are not Google emplyoee's. They have no responsibility on behalf of Google as far as I know.

[flhu]

Proof that google understands and spiders pdfs:

1. search google for manual .pdf
2. Click any of the pdf result's VIEW AS HTML
3. The resulting link is the PDF, presented as HTML, with all search words highlighted served from google's site. ( ie: The Manual The attached manual was located by the Manchester (England) Metropolitan Police during a search an al Qaeda) (Google is google)

As far as ranking and optimizing for spidering, that's a different story.

Not all PDFs are just a collection of images. Those originally generated directly from publishing layout software usually contains the text content with instructions on how to position and display it. If your pdfs are scans, consider running them through OCR so the text is in the file as, well, text. otherwise, could also use related text around and descriptive linking to the pdf, but that won't be nearly as effective.

Here's some fun: find a pdf that has text that can be highlighted as text, change its extension to .txt and load it in your favorite text editor.

[Peter]

Ok, my link was for the google webmaster blog, however the link below is directly on the Google.com website

Site not appearing in search results, or appearing lower - Webmasters/Site owners Help

That isnt a google forum message answer so I take it as "official employee" answer.


The relevent part is

Googlebot processes each of the pages it crawls in order to compile a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. In addition, we process information included in key content tags and attributes, such as title tags and alt attributes. Google can process many types of content. However, while we can process HTML, PDF, and Flash files, we have a more difficult time understanding (e.g. crawling and indexing) other rich media formats, such as Silverlight.

[kgun]

Google:

"C++ Builder 2009 Professional::: Getting started PDF download."

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "C++ Builder 2009 Professional::: Getting started PDF download.". (0.33 seconds)

Learn object oriented programming, at OopSchool.com

C++ Builder 2009 Professional::: Getting started PDF download. Kjell Gunnar Bleivik 05.01.2009::: Computing or drawing? Today, French-Russian mathematician ...
Learn object oriented programming, at OopSchool.com -

It can not be viewed as an html document today, may 8 2009.

1. I am not convinced.
2. If it is correct, it is not the default that Google automatically generates html versions of documents as we crawl the web.

Here is my robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: error_log
Disallow: .ftpquota
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /include/
Disallow: /javascript/
Disallow: /styling/

and here

#The following line allow html extension pages to act as php pages
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html .htm
#The following line removes the identifier telling the user that the page uses PHP
#Header unset X-Powered-By
#Only include this line once to enable the rewriting engine
RewriteEngine on
#Begrenser tilgang
## File paths are relative to the Document Root (/)
# '404 Not Found' error
ErrorDocument 404 /404.htm
# '403 Forbidden' error
ErrorDocument 403 /my.htm
# '401 Unauthorized' error
ErrorDocument 401 /401.htm
# Or..
# ErrorDocument 401 "The webserver could not authorise you for content access.
order deny,allow
allow from all

is my addon domain .htaccess

Here is the most important parts of my main domain .htaccess

#The following line allow html extension pages to act as php pages
#AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html
#The following line removes the identifier telling the user that the page uses PHP
#Header unset X-Powered-By
#Only include this line once to enable the rewriting engine
RewriteEngine on
#Begrenser tilgang
## File paths are relative to the Document Root (/)
# '404 Not Found' error
ErrorDocument 404 /404.htm
# '403 Forbidden' error
ErrorDocument 403 "Sorry: We have no capacity to allow you access now. Please, try later.
#ErrorDocument 403 "Sorry: We are upgrading our forum. Please, try later.
# Or..
#ErrorDocument 403 /403.htm
# '401 Unauthorized' error
ErrorDocument 401 "The webserver could not authorise you for content access.
# Or..
#ErrorDocument 401 /401.htm
#
# Managing server access
#
<Files "config.php">
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from All
</Files>
#
<Files "common.php">
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from All
</Files>
order deny,allow
deny from all
#
# White list start

..............................

# White list end
# The next line is commented out when the above white list is used.
allow from all

[wacjr66]

You're right kgun, it is difficult to find definitive documentation from Google that they officially crawl the content of PDF files and rank specifically on content instead of IBL influence. I still believe they can do it.

There's only two links to the PDF at www dot nlcdd dot org/managedcare/policy-bulletin-short.pdf one from the site www dot nlcdd dot org as follows

[a href="www dot nlcdd dot org/managedcare/policy-bulletin-short.pdf" target="_blank" title="PDF file opens in a new window."][img src="images/nlcdd-policy.gif" alt="NLCDD Policy Brief on Managed Care in DD Field - Click Here!" width="163" height="181" id="brief" /][/a] (linked from an image, not text. alt attrb. has "Managed Care in DD Field" not exact match to the search phrase may have something to do with IBL, I doubt it though)

and one from a larger PDF at www dot nlcdd dot org/pdf/PolicyInsightsBulletin(March2009).pdf

--from PDF doc--

"...which is posted on the website of the National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities at www dot nlcdd dot org/managedcare."

So why would a search for "managed care in the developmental disabilities sector" bring this PDF up as #2 in SERP with snip of content including the phrase if Google hadn't crawled the document in some way?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by wacjr66

So why would a search for "managed care in the developmental disabilities sector" bring this PDF up as #2 in SERP with snip of content including the phrase if Google hadn't crawled the document in some way?

1. For years, desktop search have had the ability to search inside some types of documents.
2. Screen readers may have functions that a browser don't have. Screen readers are for disabled people.
3. Google may give extra service to disabled people based on KW's.

[chrisJumbo]

Originally Posted by kgun

My bolding. Proof to whom?

Do you find any proof on google.com?

I searched using Google.com. The messege was inserted by google.com.

I typed "google indexing pdf" into google's SE. And found tons of links, by sites that I would consider authoritive:
Google Now Indexing Text Within Scanned Adobe PDF Files
Official Google Blog: A picture of a thousand words?
Google Does PDF & Other Changes - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

So, Kgun, I'm not sure what "proof" you are looking for, but the evidence seems spot on to me.

But, like I said, I think the user experience is better if the pdf is converted into html and then the pdf can be offered as a download for a potentially fancier, portable presentation/document.
cd :O)

[wacjr66]

When a client insists on a PDF I will continue to suggest no security measures on the doc and that it have great content full of targeted keywords/phrases and links to their site(s), if possible. And I will stick to my theory that Google can crawl and index PDFs based on that content.

[cbosleeds]

I have some information on SEO for PDFs and a video here: Link building with PDFs


I'm not sure what damage password protecting a PDF might do to be honest after reading the above so maybe ignore that bit.

[Pico_Train]

The phrase I searched for was at the bottom of the pdf. There were only 2 results returned. First place was the document found.

I didn't post links because in the other forums I frequent it is frowned upon.

PDFs are crawled to be converted into HTML, they are indexed and they are ranked.

[texxs]

Please do the internet community a favor and talk your client out of using pdf's.

They suck. And they just keep getting worse.

Here's a couple links:

pdfs suck - Yahoo! Search Results '

(I changed it to the SE results becuase there's just so many sites out there explaining the numerous way pdf's aren't fit for use except in very, very limited circumstances.)

[lindaczelusniak]

I agree with texxs; PDF's are awful as web content. It seems everyone on this post is off on academic discussions on PDF's getting crawled or not when the first question to Vithe should be why all the PDFs?

PDF's were never meant to replace hmtl and just break peoples surfing experience. I often see them used out of pure laziness; people don't want to recreate marketing material in print and online formats...

Now, for manuals and other documents that mostly get printed, yeah, use PDF's but for web content they are the ultimate party poopers

[Vithe]

Well to give you a bit of background, my company has never uploaded its press releases to the web so we have loads (read: like 60) stored up.

My choices seem to be a) upload them as they are or b) take the content and make a load of brand new html pages.

Unfortunately I'm not that technical - I don't ever create new pages, I have to get one of the IT guys to do that - but I can add to existing pages through the CMS.

So, option a) would be fine for me to do because I can upload the pdfs using our FTP, whilst option b) would involve having to get one of our technical guys to spend ages creating new pages.

What I was hoping was that PDFs could be read by search engines quite well so option a) would suffice and I could do the work myself. This is why I was planning to down the snippet + pdf route.

I realise that this might seem a bit of a lame reason - and probably makes me look quite daft for those of you with much more technical knowledge - but the practical side of it is quite important for me.

I really appreciate all of the comments that have been made here and I can see the benefits of adding the page in proper online format. I'm not keen on PDFs when I'm surfing the web either.

I think I will try to go down the html route as it really seems that that is going to be the best for both search engines and visitors. Pity the poor overworked technical team

Thanks for all your comments. I hope you don't think me too naive but my background is mostly as an SEO copywriter and I'm having to do some catch up on the technical side of things.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by Vithe

The company I work for are about to upload a shedload of pdfs to the website and I would like them to be as optimised as possible. I've never gone about optimising pdfs before though.

I did search on this forum before posting but couldn't find any information about this topic at all.

I have a couple of questions which I hope you can help me answer:

Firstly, does Google read and rank pdfs pretty well?

Secondly, what are your best pdf optimisation tips?

Many thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

If the pdf's contain real content (i.e. they´re not just technical data sheets and a bunch of images.) then I would consider the option to create HTML versions of these documents. Each page in the pdf is a page in your website, with "next page" and "previous page" links and a list of links of all pages in the left column.

Doing this will give you the best result, but it might be an awful lot of work.

[texxs]

Originally Posted by Vithe

My choices seem to be a) upload them as they are or b) take the content and make a load of brand new html pages.

There's software that converts .pdf's to html automatically, takes less than a second per page usually.

Hate to keep spouting off negativety, but pdf's aren't good for printing either. They only time you should use them is when you are required to have an encrypted document that the average person can't edit, as in a contract. Even then you should take the time to learn how to "lock" it in the software you created the document in the first place.

the whole PDF thing just doesn't make sense to use EVER in my book:

Here's a typical effiecent work flow:

• Open MS Word ($200) Or OpenOffice (free)
• Create document
• Lock document , save it
• Distribute document
• Need to find a document out of the hundreds or thousands you have? Easy, just use any normal search tool, like windows search or google desktop (not recomended because it's spyware)

Here's the PDf workflow

• Open MS Word ($200) Or OpenOffice (free)
• Create document, save it
• Open document with Adobe Acrobat ($300)
• Create a pdf
• Distribute document
• If distributing via internet, pay extra for bandwidth, and live with the fact you are most definitely crashing computers left and right as well as slowing down the rest of your web site.
• answer complaints about how Adobe reader crashes your users computers
• always wonder, did they read my material or did it crash their computer?
• always wonder, Do they think I don't know tech because I'm using PDF's?
• Need to find a document out of the hundreds or thousands you have? You out of luck, unless you know the file name.

Now why does anyone use PDF's again?

Please there must be some reason people use pdf's? Is is really because they Don't want to take 5 minutes to learn how to lock documents in their word processor? Seriously?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by lindaczelusniak

Now, for manuals and other documents that mostly get printed, yeah, use PDF's but for web content they are the ultimate party poopers

Agree. Se my above example.

Originally Posted by texxs

Now why does anyone use PDF's again?

IMO, Because it is portable, platform independent. That was the main reason, at least as far as I understand, that Adobe made Acrobat reader and the professional version that can make PDF documents.

I create them very fast in MS Word. When the Word document is finished, I click the PDF button and a document of 50 pages is created in a few minutes.

Originally Posted by texxs

• Need to find a document out of the hundreds or thousands you have? Easy, just use any normal search tool, like windows search or google desktop (not recomended because it's spyware)

My bolding. Another example of WWW rumor or fact?

[innominds]

Originally Posted by NetProwler

@innominds:

When you are creating/saving your pdf file - select the security tab from the application you are using and select the 'Encrypt the PDF document' option which will prompt you for a password. Your saved file can't be indexed by any search engine.

I don't think the free ones like Cute PDF has this feature.

How about zipping the pdf file? Will it index it?

[granite4less]

now Mozilla also support pdf. may be Google also able to crawl pdf. content

[LinksAndTraffic]

Originally Posted by kgun

"Can the search engines read PDF files?

Yes, most of the major search engines now can read the basic contents of PDF files, though getting these pages to rank as well as HTML files is still questionable".

New to me.

I agree. I have worked with pdf software that can open and change around pdf files, so google will not have a problem opening them either. But let's take it one step further. Google can read pdf files, or else, pdf files would not be in their index - and they are.

I have never heard about using pdf's for search engine marketing, but I guess it could be done. It is certainly worth exploring.

[LinksAndTraffic]

Originally Posted by NetProwler

@innominds:

When you are creating/saving your pdf file - select the security tab from the application you are using and select the 'Encrypt the PDF document' option which will prompt you for a password. Your saved file can't be indexed by any search engine.

You could also put your pdf files into a special directory, then tell the robots in your robots.txt that the directory is off limits to them.

[Webnauts]

Try out this free software A-PDF INFO Changer: A free utility for reading and changing properties of PDF files, includes author, title, subject, keywords.! [A-PDF.com] for your PDFs.
Create a PDF file properly, get it indexed and tell us what happen.

Here are some tips that may help: http://searchengineland.com/eleven-t...-engines-12156