Thread: Flash 8
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Old 05-06-2006, 03:32 PM
stevegreen stevegreen is offline
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Google isn't spidering the Flash content of this site, and it looks like they are doing a bit of black hat SEO.

You can see what's going on if you uninstall Flash and view the page. There is some text but what Google is picking up is the 'alt' text for a string of 1-pixel transparent images. These can be seen in the source code and they can be seen on screen by holding down the Tab key and watching the path of the focus (the images are links). You will see two series of white dots on the black background, one containing about 50 of these images and the other containing 20.

Each image has a huge amount of 'alt' text and it is clearly not intended for people to read because it is only displayed for a few seconds even if you were able to locate and hover over the 1-pixel image.

These techniques are easy for Google to detect and are exactly the sort of things I would expect them to penalise. I cannot think of any legitimate reason for designing the site this way.

Steve Green
Director
Test Partners Ltd / First Accessibility
http://www.testpartners.co.uk
http://www.accessibility.co.uk
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