What has happened since?

I wrote a short e-mail to Valio Consumer Services about the Gefilus and SEO, linking to these pages. Short and polite reply came pretty quickly, stating that they will deliver the feedback to developers of the site.

And now?

What was earlier like this:

Sivusto vaatii toimiakseen selaimen joka tukee freimejä. Ole hyvä ja päivitä selaimesi.

Looks now like this:

Gefilus – Vahvistaa vastustuskykyä. Sopii kaiken ikäisille

What can I say?

Now the <noframes> -element even has a nice little link to some other site (which sadly is the same Flash-based site as Gefilus.fi).

Power of feedback is remarkable, I’d say.

And why did I do this, someone asks?
No-one paid me any money. Pro bono. Free. Kansalaistoimintaa.

I might have just as well done nothing. Or just laughed my tiny ass off.

I didn’t. Now the problem is somehow fixed.

What else?

At the original posting I wondered who on earth makes only Flash-based sites with no proper content for search engines.

Well, who makes them?

The link at <noframes>-element leads to Vapaatila.net, or actually SEK&Grey, Finland’s biggest ad agency.

Sic.

You might as well draw your own conclusions about SEK&Grey’s own website (Flash, Whoo-hoo!), source code below:

<noscript>
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" name="sek" width="100%" height="100%" align="middle" id="sek">
  <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
  <param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" />
  <param name="movie" value="sek.swf" />

  <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />
  <embed src="sek.swf" scale="exactfit" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="100%" height="100%" name="sek" align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" allowfullscreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object>
</noscript>

I rest my case.

Anyhoo, I’m glad that Gefilus is somehow better;)

Related posts:

1. Gefilus (Valio revisited)
2. Patton and Wonderful Guys
3. Old but Good (Here Comes Another Bubble)

When going through the results something caught my eye, Gefilus. Google result looks like this:

Valio

Sivusto vaatii toimiakseen selaimen joka tukee freimejä. Ole hyvä ja päivitä selaimesi.
www.gefilus.fi/ – 2k – Välimuistissa – Samankaltaisia sivuja

Yes, you say, and then what, you continue.

Well yes. Gefilus is a Valio product line in which all dairy products include Lactobacillus GG Bacteria and should be healhty for each and every one of us.

Now, that’s not the point.
The point is the Google result for Gefilus which looks exactly like above. (They even have bought a Google Sponsored link to tell what the hell this is all about!)

Why all this?

Finnish text at Google result says (in english):
“This site requires a browser that supports frames to work. Please upgrade your browser.”

My browser? Oh yes, newest Firefox.

Google’s browser? Why that’s a whole different matter – and believe me or not, it’s not Chrome.

Google has no eyes or ears. It doesn’t support Flash or frames properly (and it’s not even supposed to, IMHO). (See Wikipedia on Web Crawlers for more information.)

And as Googlebot, Google’s search robot (or web crawler), doesn’t support frames, the only content Gefilus.fi shows to Bot is the (in principle properly used, mind you) <noframes> -element and it’s content.

Thus the awkward Google result.

Conclusions

• If you still use frames at 2009, do use the <noframes> -element.
• … and if you use the noframes-element, put some meaningful content in it, because that may be everything the allmighty Google sees.
• … and if it’s not in Google, it doesn’t exist, does it?
• …which leads me to wonder what the hell  the ad agency behind Gefilus.fi thought when doing all this? (Flash, frames, page titles (whole Gefilus.fi is named “Valio” according to HTML)).
  Looks pretty, yeah, contents are fine but what about the technical side?

Related posts:

1. The Power of Feedback (Gefilus, once again)
2. Valio.fi – anna elämän maistua.
3. Opera Mini 4.1 (or my mobile browsing, revisited)

Home - Valio.fi's front page

Above is a screenshot of Valio.fi, front page (in english).

The english version of finnish site is somehow empty, so I’ll use the finnish side instead (sorry!).

I’ll review the site shortly on three two aspects (as I’m lazy, this is my blog and the third category, usability, got me bored):

1. Design and looks
2. Technical side
3. Ad Hoc usability and Information Architecture

Design and looks

In my opinion the new design looks good and fresh – as it should when advertising dairy produts;)  Compared to old design the contrast is great, or what would you say? (Screen grab using Archive.org below)

Especially the orange compared to new blueish theme is somehow annoying in the old version,

Flowerish logo theme is repeated at page background and images, nice!

Technical side

Platform

On technical side the site uses Oracle Portal as platform (as did the old one, too). Oracle’s platform is sturdy enterprise level publishing platform which suits high traffic sites like Valio (although according to TNS Metrix it isn’t one of the 250 Top Finnish sites).

HTML Validation

• returns HTTP 406 when trying to validate with W3C Validator.
• using Firefox HTML Validator returns over 100 errors, starting with no Doctype declaration.
• Result: terrible, doesn’t validate as anything.

Opera Mini Simulator Test (mobile use)

• works pretty well

Styles

• What site at 2009 uses document specific styles (with <style> -element)? Ah, I remembered, Valio.fi.

Random

• Page naming is awful (simple SEO, Search Engine Optimization,  anyone?)
  • example 1, front page is titled “Etusivu” (front page)
  • example 2, Tilauspiste page is simply titled “Tilauspiste”
  • would it be better if it read Valio somewhere?
    for example:
    Etusivu – Valio.fi
• URL‘s are quite pretty, no page ID’s used, nice.
  But:
  • technical platform is visible in every URL:
    http://www.valio.fi/portal/page/portal/Valio
  • so, get rid of the /portal/page/portal/ -part and yes, better!
    

Conclunsions

• Redesign looks good and sports some nifty new contents.
• Quite good a redesign on top.
• Technical side of the site is sturdy and working, but doesn’t validate.
• It’s generally good idea to select a CMS (Content Managemment System) to suit one’s needs. Perhaps Oracle Portal is the best solution here.
• URL’s are are important, too. They get printed on magazines, on milk cartons (sic!) and sides of cars.
  Try printing:
  • www.valio.fi/keittokirja in stead of
  • http://www.valio.fi/portal/page/portal/Valio/Keittokirja
  • See any difference?
    

Related posts:

1. Gefilus (Valio revisited)
2. Pretty URLs (or Aamulehti redesign)
3. The Power of Feedback (Gefilus, once again)