Google Now Crawling and Indexing Flash Content

[janeth]

Google Now Crawling and Indexing Flash Content

I wonder how this is going to affect finding information. I hate slow to load flash sites.

But I guess all in all it is a good thing.

And most of all I wonder how this will shake up the search results?

Might be fun to watch.

[kgun]

Is this new? When I search for flash in my marketing category, I get more than 6 pages of hits and two sub categories of marketing:

1. Marketing tools + Search engine optimization + How do search engines index Flash files?
2. Search engine optimization + Analysis

I did not read the article, but is GoogleBOT able to do OCR scanning?

[BossWebmaster]

No, it reads the text and links directly from the SWF file, Adobe made a special Flash Player just for them.

And I just want to echo what I said in my previous post in the Flash forem that the bar has now been raised, you web designers/developers can no longer hide behind SEO as an excuse to avoid flash.

Now that flash is spidered by Google and soon Yahoo!, you are behind the curve, adapt or become obsolete!

[janeth]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

Now that flash is spidered by Google and soon Yahoo!, you are behind the curve, adapt or become obsolete!

Is it better than a static website?

Load time is still a problem, as well as money, the usability, the friendliness, it is an over kill in most places.

Not sure I agree with you.

Do you believe that every site online should be flash?

[kgun]

Note Flash is a proprietary format that gets competition from the new canvas element standard proposed by W3C (I get 698 ) hits if I search for

Canvas element

with W3C's Google powered site search.

Letterature: The Art & Science of JavaScript

chapter 3.

That element is supported by FF and Opera, but not older versions of I.E. as far as I know.

I think that element will make life much easier for SE's than Flash content.

General search:

Vector graphics with canvas

Related thread: Adobe Helps Google, Yahoo Search Flash Files | WebProNews

[BossWebmaster]

Originally Posted by janeth

Is it better than a static website?

Load time is still a problem, as well as money, the usability, the friendliness, it is an over kill in most places.

Not sure I agree with you.

Do you believe that every site online should be flash?

Ok, the problems you are listing, are problems that can occur regardless of if you used flash or not.

Flash is not what causes these issues, it is designers/developers that do not correctly optimize or streamline their websites.

I do not think every site needs to be flash, but it wouldn't be a bad thing if they were (if they were well implemented).

[BossWebmaster]

Originally Posted by kgun

Note Flash is a proprietary format

Flash the program is, but SWF files are not. There are a wide array of programs that can output SWF files besides flash.

SWF is the format you use the Flash program to create, SWF's are the files that get embedded into the website.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

I do not think every site needs to be flash, but it wouldn't be a bad thing if they were (if they were well implemented).

Yes, it would if it degraded content.

I prefer

2 + 2 = 4

on a badly coded web 1.0 site

to

2 + 2 = 5

on an advanced Flash site.

[BossWebmaster]

Originally Posted by kgun

Yes, it would if it degraded content.

Once again, this is not an issue caused by flash, it is caused by poor web design practices. I can think of plenty of ways to degradate content without using flash.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

Flash the program is, but SWF files are not. There are a wide array of programs that can output SWF files besides flash.

SWF is the format you use the Flash program to create, SWF's are the files that get embedded into the website.

Here is

W3Toolbar.com: A collection of resources directly or indirectly related to The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

my personal ranking of web standards.

[BossWebmaster]

I'm amazed at how you guys are already squirming for excuses to not have to learn a new technology that will certainly be in demand from many companies. Probably 90% of my clients ask for flash animation right off the bat without me even having to sell it to them. And they're ready to pay more for it than regular web design, why would you try to talk someone out of that?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

Once again, this is not an issue caused by flash, it is caused by poor web design practices. I can think of plenty of ways to degradate content without using flash.

My point is, if there is a standard set by W3C dot org as there is in this case, I prefer that to other standards. Sometimes you have to prioritize.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

I'm amazed at how you guys are already squirming for excuses to not have to learn a new technology that will certainly be in demand from many companies. Probably 90% of my clients ask for flash animation right off the bat without me even having to sell it to them. And they're ready to pay more for it than regular web design, why would you try to talk someone out of that?

There was a time when a web site should have animated applets. That is history now.

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

I'm amazed at how you guys ...

Aside for you, there is one woman and one man posting in this thread so long.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

I do not think every site needs to be flash, but it wouldn't be a bad thing if they were (if they were well implemented).

Done correctly it would be ok with a smaller website. But how about a site with 20,000 pages?

[BossWebmaster]

Whatever, I will keep taking on clients who want flash, keep getting paid well for it, and now I can tell them google will spider their content just fine. You can keep trying to tell them they don't want it.

Customers do see that very major companies use flash in their websites, and they're going to wonder why you think it's a bad idea, but hey it's a free country, you can do/think whatever you want.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

I'm amazed at how you guys are already squirming for excuses to not have to learn a new technology that will certainly be in demand from many companies. Probably 90% of my clients ask for flash animation right off the bat without me even having to sell it to them. And they're ready to pay more for it than regular web design, why would you try to talk someone out of that?

I know the technology and have done many designs with it but disagree that it is the way to the future as well as that every site being designed in it would not be a bad thing.

[BossWebmaster]

Originally Posted by janeth

Done correctly it would be ok with a smaller website. But how about a site with 20,000 pages?

It could be done, but I have to be honest, I probably wouldn't try to build a 20000 page website in flash.

On the same note, if the customer wanted to update the content on their own with a CMS I probably wouldn't make the entire site in flash for that either, maybe just have the front page banner be in flash. Although I have heard of companies that have flash based CMS's and I may create my own some day.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

Whatever, I will keep taking on clients who want flash, keep getting paid well for it, and now I can tell them google will spider their content just fine. You can keep trying to tell them they don't want it.

Customers do see that very major companies use flash in their websites, and they're going to wonder why you think it's a bad idea, but hey it's a free country, you can do/think whatever you want.

Make sure they have the flash installed on their computer or they want be able to see the design you've designed for them. Sounds like another problem?

[janeth]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

It could be done, but I have to be honest, I probably wouldn't try to build a 20000 page website in flash.

On the same note, if the customer wanted to update the content on their own with a CMS I probably wouldn't make the entire site in flash for that either, maybe just have the front page banner be in flash. Although I have heard of companies that have flash based CMS's and I may create my own some day.

I've got nothing against flash, although I do believe that it's a lot like a car. Sometime the car looks better without all the chrome.

[kgun]

Another of the many religious discussions (PHP / Perl / .NET / Java / Ruby / C# / C++) have started and I may have contributed with introducing the W3C canvas element.

Use what ever functions today and hopefully tomorrow.

[advancedmerchant]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

I'm amazed at how you guys are already squirming for excuses to not have to learn a new technology that will certainly be in demand from many companies. Probably 90% of my clients ask for flash animation right off the bat without me even having to sell it to them. And they're ready to pay more for it than regular web design, why would you try to talk someone out of that?

As a professional, your responsibility is to let them know that if their target market has dial-up access, and they have bloated flash content, it will cost them customers, business and revenue. They may be enticed by how well it looks on their new corporate PC on an OC3 line, but you need to educate them about the realities of the user. If they are marketing to other corporations - fine, you can assume high download speeds, and Flash can be a powerful marketing tool. If they are marketing to the consumer, there are just too many aged, AOL-driven dinosaurs out there.

So, to answer your question as to why you would try to talk them out of it, the answer is - it is part of your job as a professional to let them know the downside of every decision made, not just how many $$ they will pay for it.

[deepsand]

From the cited materisl, "Google has been working on improving how they crawl and index rich content (such as Flash and JavaScript) for some time, ... ."

Given that parsing JS is several orders of magnitude easier than interpreting Flash, why have we not yet seen Google indexing JS encapsulated content?

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

And I just want to echo what I said in my previous post in the Flash forem that the bar has now been raised, you web designers/developers can no longer hide behind SEO as an excuse to avoid flash.

Now that flash is spidered by Google and soon Yahoo!, you are behind the curve, adapt or become obsolete!

With this I must take strong exception.

Flash is very resource intensive; and, there are exceedingly few applications that cannot adequately provide the necessary content without employing Flash.

The download & rendering time is a constant annoyance to far too many users for it to become generally accepted unless & until the user base en mass upgrades both their hardware & i'net access channels.

And, not to be forgotten is the bandwidth burden that would be placed on ISPs were Flash to become universally used.

Never send a picture to do that for which a word will suffice.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

Whatever, I will keep taking on clients who want flash, keep getting paid well for it, and now I can tell them google will spider their content just fine. You can keep trying to tell them they don't want it.

Customers do see that very major companies use flash in their websites, and they're going to wonder why you think it's a bad idea, but hey it's a free country, you can do/think whatever you want.

Yes, and there are plenty of users who, despite what your clients think that they need, will continue to exercise their freedom of choice by not waiting for that Flash page to load.

BTW, users don't give a damn about Flash or any other specific technology; and, the fact that a "major" company employs such is of no import to them. Big company or little, if it's not rendered within seconds, you've lost them.

[edhan]

Originally Posted by janeth

I've got nothing against flash, although I do believe that it's a lot like a car. Sometime the car looks better without all the chrome.

Flash will be good in terms of advertising. It is like watching the advertisement on TV. It catches my attention if the products or services I require. It is like have a picture showing the products than trying to describe using words.

Btw Janeth, how is my re-designing progressing?

[PixelPusher]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

No, it reads the text and links directly from the SWF file, Adobe made a special Flash Player just for them.

And I just want to echo what I said in my previous post in the Flash forem that the bar has now been raised, you web designers/developers can no longer hide behind SEO as an excuse to avoid flash.

Now that flash is spidered by Google and soon Yahoo!, you are behind the curve, adapt or become obsolete!

Funny.

May we see some references you did in flash?

[kevsta]

i am still pretty confident that crawling & indexing does not mean necessarily = ranking well. (yet)

1) you will still not be able to optimise flash to anywhere near the same levels you can with html. plenty of html sites are "crawled & indexed" yet don't rank well.

2) if the flash is fired by javascript as most are, it still won't be seen.

still, I suppose it gives flash supporters some hope that flash may yet become a useful business tool one day.

[sofomor]

The discussion wasn't about flash bad or flash good!!! It was about search engines now apparently making headways in indexing content embedded in flash. Its now matter of choice, "do or not to do flash".

My personal take:

- Marketing point of view ( make )
- Browsing speed load time ( break )
- Conversions ( make )
- Compatibility ( break )
- Version upgrades ( break )
- Content plagiarism / Copy Paste Culture ( break / make )
- High development costs ( more bucks for BossWebmaster )
- SilverLight gets a beating ( dunno what to say )

Thank you

[BossWebmaster]

Originally Posted by advancedmerchant

As a professional, your responsibility is to let them know that if their target market has dial-up access, and they have bloated flash content, it will cost them customers, business and revenue. They may be enticed by how well it looks on their new corporate PC on an OC3 line, but you need to educate them about the realities of the user. If they are marketing to other corporations - fine, you can assume high download speeds, and Flash can be a powerful marketing tool. If they are marketing to the consumer, there are just too many aged, AOL-driven dinosaurs out there.

So, to answer your question as to why you would try to talk them out of it, the answer is - it is part of your job as a professional to let them know the downside of every decision made, not just how many $$ they will pay for it.

I work for a real estate company, they had me add an animated flash map splash page to redirect clients to the part of the website for their geographic area, our conversions went up.

As for connection speeds, lets see here... pulling up my analytics software... of the 25,206 hits I got last month, 806 were using dialup, with a 23% bounce rate which is actually lower than the DSL bounce rate of 33%.

Hmmm.... I've never thought the dial up argument was a very good one, and the numbers seem to agree with me.

[BossWebmaster]

Originally Posted by PixelPusher

Funny.

May we see some references you did in flash?

Candler Hills Golf Course - Ocala, Florida

robertkrames.com (I'm redoing this one, I've since learned how to optimize 3d animations better, but most people still think it's a nice site)

Close Construction Inc. - Okeechobee, Fl Construction Company

Enjoy

Got a few more in the works...

[PixelPusher]

Originally Posted by BossWebmaster

Candler Hills Golf Course - Ocala, Florida

robertkrames.com (I'm redoing this one, I've since learned how to optimize 3d animations better, but most people still think it's a nice site)

Close Construction Inc. - Okeechobee, Fl Construction Company

Enjoy

Got a few more in the works...

These are not fullflash-sites, so why are we arguing? Of course we do HTMl-Sites with some Flash-parts embedded as well and quite often. Personally, I think flash-navigation-menus and flash-intros are no-gos for small business sites. For your sites, the main content is HTML, so nothing unusual.

[inertia]

Originally Posted by PixelPusher

These are not fullflash-sites, so why are we arguing? Of course we do HTMl-Sites with some Flash-parts embedded as well and quite often. Personally, I think flash-navigation-menus and flash-intros are no-gos for small business sites. For your sites, the main content is HTML, so nothing unusual.

Thats what i was thinking! What about the sites which are ALL flash!? Does this mean that Google can now follow flash menus?

[BossWebmaster]

Well I haven't designed sites completely in flash, because google couldn't read them previously. I'm going to redo my personal site in flash but it may be a while, because I'm busy with other stuff.

PixelPusher: if you look at other peoples arguments, they are saying flash is 100% useless

inertia: yes, google can now follow links in flash and read text in flash

[PixelPusher]

If I did understand it right - YES, the Googlebot can now follow the links in Flashmenus. But again, no one knows HOW WELL these sites will be ranking.

@BossWebmaster: Of course Flash isn't useless at all. Actually it is a very nice and cool tool if you use it right. Combined with nicely coded XHTML and CSS it can offer great eye-candy and maybe usability (slideshows, animated charts etc., online games ...) for the user.
In my opinion, flash is often used the wrong way, THAT'S the problem.

[PixelPusher]

Further Information:

Condensed info on Google & Yahoo Begins to Index Some Flash Files (SWF Files) and a longer article by vanessa fox here:
Google Now Crawling and Indexing Flash Content

Doesn't sound like the holy grail for (flash-)webdesigners but an improvement.

[chrisJumbo]

PixelPusher, thanks for the extended article. It doesn't seem like much will change in the short-term and even in the long-term whether the site is Flash, HTML, PHP, etc., you will still need SEO/SEM to get your site found and to have the traffic coming.

[Orion]

Flash is a very old technology.. I learned it in 1998...

the way it's being used and the way that (now Adobe) is backing it has changed and it is for the better...

Adobe has taken their proprietary program and used it's base to create a bot for Google and Yahoo to extract the text from swf files.. great stuff... wonderful..

Flash is also behind the video revolution (YouTube etc are all Flash Video driven).. It's also used commercially in Advertisements and stuff...

Anyway that being said... it has nothing to do with the age old debate of should I do a flash site.. There's HUGE tables of pros and cons to flash based design AND now ONLY ONE (1) item has been removed from the con side of the list (that of searchability)...

You still have to remember the basics...
Some reasons you might use Flash:
demographics <30 years of age
Broadband users
Does your product need animation?
Does your product require video to help sell it?
Consider using flash only to enhance (subtly it can be very appealing and professional)

BUT remember it costs a fortune to get someone who actually knows how to design an accessible site in Flash... I remember when Spiderman 2 came out someone mentioned to me that site cost somewhere in the 6 figures to design...

It's a great powerful product but not always appropriate.. and it needs to be done well.

... k that's it for my 2cents worth lol...