Flash - Help needed from SEO Gurus

[Ann]

Hi,

I have seen that now a days Google started crawling flash. Many of my clients website flash is also crawled & showing in the results.

My question is that how to know that what is indexed in your flash i.e. the text. Is their anyway to check before getting flash indexed by Google? I have checked with the SEO browser website, Lynx Browser etc but they are not able to show the content of the flash.

My company is now planning to design websites completely in Flash after knowing that flash is now indexed by SE's.

SEO Gurus please help...

[texxs]

This would be something new for google if true.

Old school thinking was that google has alwyas crawled flash, the only thing they get out of them is the file name of the swf though.
I kinda doubt that's changed.

Keep us posted though!

This could be huge if google hs made a sneaky quiet change to start reading the text in a swf.

[Pilana]

Even nowarday not all like animate pages. If site has a lot of information to read flash diverts from text sense.

[DrTandem1]

There was a topic recently on this site where a site had a banner or logo done in Flash. It also had a link embeeded to another version of the site in Spanish, I think. That's what started the topic. The only link to the other version of the site was embedded in the Flash and Google had indexed it.

Someone in that thread mentioned they could see the link, if they opened the Flash file as a text file, but I'm not sure how that worked.

[imvain2]

Thinking about this topic logically. I would come up with this concept, ok so Google maybe spidering select elements of flash, but is it truly worth the risk of making the complete site in flash under the hope that the website will get spidered correctly by only one of the three top search engines (IMO - Google,yahoo & msn - in no specific order)?

Why not make the site in Flash and have a html version available via a regular link in the html below the calling of the flash?

[DrTandem1]

I forgot to add that a site done entirely in Flash is not a good idea for most sites. Look at Adobe's site. They own Flash and even their own site isn't entirely in Flash.

[nelsonez]

Originally Posted by Ann

I have seen that now a days Google started crawling flash. Many of my clients website flash is also crawled & showing in the results.

The real indication that Google is crawling FLASH is to type a 6 word phrase within quotes that is embedded in a FLASH file and see if Google can find that phrase for that exact webpage.

So far I have not seen any evidence for this.

All FLASH-based websites have to have some HTML to run so that is what usually gets indexed and not the FLASH itself. Title tags, meta tags, comment tags, noscript tags ect... and anyone other HTML based links that might be on the page.

Having your web address show in the search engines does not mean that they are indexing your FLASH.

Try what I suggested and let us know what you find. I think you will see that for the most part FLASH is not being indexed. This may have changed recently but like I said I have not seen any evidence for this.

On a side not Google can index PDF files as I am sure everyone is aware of so it may not be too long before they are able to also index text within FLASH. Just haven't seen any widespread evidence for this.

[DrTandem1]

Actually, that is no longer true:

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/20...chael-marshall

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2161851

However, again I say that most sites should not be designed entirely with Flash. SEO has little to do with my opinion.

[Clarrie]

Originally Posted by nelsonez

The real indication that Google is crawling FLASH is to type a 6 word phrase within quotes that is embedded in a FLASH file and see if Google can find that phrase for that exact webpage.

So far I have not seen any evidence for this.

All FLASH-based websites have to have some HTML to run so that is what usually gets indexed and not the FLASH itself. Title tags, meta tags, comment tags, noscript tags ect... and anyone other HTML based links that might be on the page.

Having your web address show in the search engines does not mean that they are indexing your FLASH.

Try what I suggested and let us know what you find. I think you will see that for the most part FLASH is not being indexed. This may have changed recently but like I said I have not seen any evidence for this.

On a side not Google can index PDF files as I am sure everyone is aware of so it may not be too long before they are able to also index text within FLASH. Just haven't seen any widespread evidence for this.

Google indexes the text in Flash (and reads the links). If you search for a unique search string contained in a Flash movie, Google returns the movie as a separate document (in the same way it does with PDF), even if its embedded in a page.

However, I suspect that although Google is indexing Flash, its not necessarily giving documents the same weight in the search results, so I don't think building sites only in Flash is a good idea yet.

[nelsonez]

Originally Posted by DrTandem1

Actually, that is no longer true:

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/20...chael-marshall

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2161851

Thanks for those links DrTandem. I stand corrected. It does appear possible but the question is how easy is it and how spread is it. Up until today I have never seen the [FLASH] designation in a Google search and I search everyday. So it must not happen with much regularity and my guess is there is a certain technique to make your FLASH file so that it is created in such a way that it can be indexed. Most FLASH designers probably don't know how this needs to be done.

I would say it is simlar to the fact that Google can sometimes index body text written by a javascript and sometimes it can't. It depends on how standard the javascript is. A custom written javascript is most likely not going to be read by the Google spider whereas standard scripts like Google's own adsense script are indexed.

[texxs]

AH HA!

Someone in that thread mentioned they could see the link, if they opened the Flash file as a text file, but I'm not sure how that worked.

You can tell FLash to take the the text from an .xml or plain text file and display it in the .swf . .Xml and plain text are readable by SE's. This may been what happened. IE google didnn't read and index the content in the .swf file but the .xml or.txt file the .swf was receiving it's text from.

How's that theory sound?

All FLASH-based websites have to have some HTML to run

- not true at all. They don't have to have a spec of html, you can open a .swf w/ a browser. They just usually have some html around the the .swf for sizing and aligning. It wouldn't be html that's indexed by a SE.

[sofomor]

My company is now planning to design websites completely in Flash after knowing that flash is now indexed by SE's.

Hey hey wait up buddy, let that Google trend be completely LIVE and visible, Okay?

There is a big difference between indexing "flash files and flash pages". Flash files are used to save space on the page and to allure the audience. Currently search engines are "primarily" text based. They are beginning to make headways in "understanding" the flash content.

To confirm your claim, try doing searches for your major/top keywords and see if a "complete" flash based site is smiling at you

Thank you