Do search engines read webfonts?

Marketing
1

html5 webfonts are becoming a lot more popular with the wordpress themes i tend to use. do search engines pickup the text within the webfonts?

for instance, would they pickup the Lorem ipsum headings and subheadings in this theme demo? http://www.unispheredesign.com/demo/minim/white/

please advise. thanks in advance.

2

Ys, they’ll index the dummy text if they can crawl the page.

3

Text is text, and search engines will quite happily read it. They couldn’t care less what font you’re using – whether it’s locally installed or downloaded as it’s needed.

A good rule of thumb is to turn off images, styles and scripts, and see what your page looks like ‘naked’. If the headings, navigation and image placeholders make sense then Google will be able to understand the page just fine.

4

thanks. i can understand that text is text if its right next to eachother but the search engines still recognize a phrase or heading if its seperated by a lot of other html code, just like the text in that example site is?

<h3>
<cufon class=“cufon cufon-canvas” alt="Lorem " style="width: 97px; height: 30px; ">
<canvas width=“122” height=“34” style="width: 122px; height: 34px; top: -3px; left: -1px; "/>
<cufontext>Lorem</cufontext>
</cufon>
<cufon class=“cufon cufon-canvas” alt=“ipsum” style="width: 86px; height: 30px; ">
<canvas width=“91” height=“34” style="width: 91px; height: 34px; top: -3px; left: -1px; "/>
<cufontext>ipsum</cufontext>
</cufon>
</h3>

so the search engines read it like this?

<h3>Lorem ipsum</h3>

is that right?

5

That’s cufon text (not a webfont but an canvas technique) - there’s a difference between rendered text and the text the search engines crawl - (at least IIRC) they ignore the rendered styles and such and concentrate on the returned text only.

6

thanks. trying to keep up here.

So cufon canvas text is or is not a rendered text?

And you’re saying that they ignore the ‘rendered styles’… so that means they still read the actual text?

7

Search engines ‘see’ about the same amount of what is in a web page as blind people do.

8

Seacrh engine spiders read text as it is whether it is written in different styles or fonts.

9

Search engines do render pages and use the information to determine how much of the space above the fold is allotted to ads and how much to content (this information has been mentioned in relation to Adsense, Panda & Instant Previews).

http://andrewhansen.name/affiliate-marketing/google-checkmates-me-but-reveals-internal-secrets/

There is no proof that they are using this information for anything else in rankings yet, but it is something to keep in mind that they do have the ability to do some rudimentary page analysis based on auto page rendering, and not just based on html text analysis.

10

i appreciate the insight from everyone. maybe it went over my head or i’m just dense, but i still have not seen a clear yes or no answer on whether or not the search engines will read that page as

<h3>Lorem ipsum</h3>
.

so… will they?

11

Check out post #5.

12

[QUOTE=revium;4980841I wanted to clarify that search engines can tell the layout and format of a page, and where certain elements are situated on it.[/QUOTE]

So can blind people.

13

But that doesn’t respond to his question - ads (which are another entity all together) and rendered text are completely different animals. That’s external content where cufon text and such is internal content.

14

I was responding the statement that ‘Search engines ‘see’ about the same amount of what is in a web page as blind people do.’

I wanted to clarify that search engines can tell the layout and format of a page, and where certain elements are situated on it.

15