Comments on: Optimize PDF Files For Websites and Search Engines

By: Mark McLaren

Mark McLaren — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:39:42 +0000

Reducing the file size of PDFs is easy in Acrobat 8 and later. Go to Document > Reduce File Size… I’m sure that most non-Adobe PDF applications have a similar feature, but I have not tried any.

As for downloading thumbnails, I have not heard of this. You could direct this question to Adobe by calling their sales department or sending them an email.

By: Maysam Mohseni

Maysam Mohseni — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:38:19 +0000

I have a off-subject question about how to make the large PDF files(50MB) web friendly- meaning that they would load faster. Can you please touch on this.

Also Is there a way to have thumbnails of the pages in the file loaded first and when the user wants to view a specific page then the whole page gets downloaded?

Thanks,

By: Mark McLaren

Mark McLaren — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:01:27 +0000

Roger,
The easiest way to see if a PDF has been indexed by Google (that I know of) is to open the PDF, copy a long part of any sentence — 5 or 6 words should do — paste this into the Google search box with double quotes on either end and click Google Search. If the PDF is indexed, Google will show you a link to it in the results page.

You can try this with any text to see if it’s on the Web somewhere. The more specific to a given document or web page, the more likely Google will find that and that only.

Using the double quotes is important. For example, Google search “web marketing resource for small and medium-sized businesses” without the quotes and you find 200,000 results, mcbuzz.com being one of them. But add the quotes and Google will show you one result.

Here is a follow-up to this discussion: Are PDF Files Indexed by Google?

By: Roger Willard

Roger Willard — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:34:03 +0000

Question
I publish a newsletter and post it on my site in pdf format. I use WordPerfect (version 12) to write it and it converts it to pdf for sending to my printing and my website. You write and say the document must be in a text and not a total graphic format to be seen by the search engines. Do you know if the conversion made by WordPerfect is true text pdf or is it a total graphic, hence not able to be indexed by the siders. Thank you.

By: Mark McLaren

Mark McLaren — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:54:25 +0000

Geoff,
Good question. If you need to make a decision right away based on the answer, it is best to assume that the answer is yes. I am going to check it out to make sure this is true, so please check back.

Here is an update: as one would expect, if security settings on a PDF document are such that it cannot be opened without a password, then search engine spiders will not be able to read or index the document.

The question is what security settings, if any — other than none — will allow spiders to read a PDF document online. I sent an email to a colleague at Adobe about this. I don’t see anything on their website about it. Will keep you posted.

By: Geoff Dodd - pdf

Geoff Dodd - pdf — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:15:57 +0000

A question. If I use all available security measures in a pdf, will the pdf file be encrypted and therefore impossible for the search engine spiders to read?