pdf vs. html content - which counts more for Google rankings?

[milkyway]

Folks,

I got into a discussion recently with somebody who puts a lot of content as pdf files on his web sites. He insists that Google lists pdf files in the search results, too, so why bother to convert it into html?

My gut feeling was that html content would be more helpful, seo-wise, but of course a gut feeling doesn't help a lot...

I tried to find helpful data on the web. There are a lot of instructions about how to improve pdf files for the search engines, but I couldn't find any comparisons between pdf rankings and html rankings.

Has anybody ever tried this out? Does html content rank higher or count more than pdf content? Anybody got any reliable data on this?


Cheers,

Regine

PS: I'm not talking about pdf-only sites. This guy has normal web sites, plus loads of additional content. Just wondering if it would be worth the time to convert it into decent html...

[Dhira]

Interesting question.

I could possibly see maybe if the content was a particular page on a particular long-tail keyword, but probably not much else?

[milkyway]

Originally Posted by Dhira

Interesting question.

I could possibly see maybe if the content was a particular page on a particular long-tail keyword, but probably not much else?

In the particular case I was talking about, nobody cares about keywords...

But it got me wondering in general. With all the focus that Google currently seems to put on different media (videos, pictures etc) -- if you had a very competitive keyword and were the only one to offer a pdf on that topic...

Just wondering...

And of course there is still the original question if it makes sense for that guy to transfer his content into html pages, or offer both html and pdf. It would be a lot of work for him, and I'm not sure if the outcome will be worth the effort. Thoughts appreciated.

Regine