are Flash pages googleable ?

[oneofmanytims]

some friends of mine just went all-flash with their cafe website. will anybody ever be able to find good vibes cafe, in long beach, CA using the google search engine if the entire site is just a flash file ?

[advancedmerchant]

Google is now indexing Flash pages, so you WILL be indexed, but it is much harder to SEO in Flash.

Also, 100% Flash sites take away many of the features Power Users use- If I am following something, and I see something else I want to investigate, I right-click to open the secondary item of interest in a new window, so I can follow that seperately- Flash sites take this option away, so I avoid them when I can as my options on that site are more limited. Also, Flash forces the user to watch all those silly animations, pictures, and movies. If I wanted those, I would have Google searched for Images / Video. I search for ANSWERS (Content). Most users could care less how pretty your site is if you don't have what they want, nor do they care (within reason) how feature-lacking your site is if you have exactly what they searched for in the first place.

Flash is a powerful ENHANCEMENT to site design, but it should not take the PLACE of your site's framework.

my .02

[xclusive]

avoid using flash as much as you can, no matter what..

[iaccess]

As of June of 2008, Google does crawl and index some aspects of Flash. It can find certain text elements, and it can find and follow certain links. I am seeing a lot of sites that used to be invisible to Google now being found and indexed, and inner pages of sites that used Flash navigation are being crawled and indexed.

However, so far I don't see Flash sites ranking nearly as well as those using HTML and CSS (XHTML). The rare exceptions are very strong brand sites that have very strong linking (e.g., Pontiac.com (http://www.pontiac.com)).

The problem with Flash is that content and links are inside the Flash object, and there are not nearly as many indicators as to how that text is displayed and what is important. With HTML, there are many more such indicators and thus higher trust. Also, Flash sites are often monolithic -- all content served within one object on one page -- much harder to present many topics to search engines and have them rank independently.

Another problem with Flash is that while Google does limited crawling and indexing, no other major search engine does (e.g., Yahoo and MSN). Google has a lot of market share, but it is silly to ignore the 25-35% that is not Google.

So, if you are serious about SEO, do not use Flash as the primary presentation vehicle -- use HTML pages. It is fine to use Flash objects to enhance these pages, but be sure those pages also have good HTML content that follows best practices.

[ronchalice]

If you are in the animation business, use flash. If your business advertises heavily on television and you want to cement that link (as iaccess mentioned pontiac.com), use flash. Other that that, it's probably faster, cheaper, more flexible, and more effective to stick to basics.

[oneofmanytims]

Thanks for the informed replies. As mentioned, flash can be a nice add-on to a website, but can be ill-used, over-used and mis-used. And getting it googled is hard unless you know what you're doing. (which I don't)

The site in question is: goodvibescafe.com . I had a nice, simple wordpress site set up for them (using wordpress like a cms). We had several current articles of local interest with on-going conversations and the ability for users join and to add/edit content. Now they've got this all-flash-no-substance slide show. It pains me. Why do people do stuff like this ?

Somebody mentioned that they go to sites for content, not for entertainment - something like that. That describes me also. so, why do so many webmasters dis-regard content and go strictly for eye-appeal ? It wounds me . . . maybe I should talk to my schrink about it.

[imvain2]

oneofmanytimes:

Why would so many people disregard content and for eye-appeal, that is a loaded question.

I believe there are a few standard reasons:

1). Not all "web designers" are graphic artists and vice versa. So when you find yourself a graphic artist who becomes a "web designers", they see different importances. For them the focus is on a great presentation. Where as someone who is a good web designer (no matter their graphic artists skills), understands that design is very important, but not the only importance. ****If you consider yourself a graphic artist, please don't be insulted, I understand this is a generalization based on the graphic artists that I have worked with in the past.****

2). CLIENT IS ALWAYS RIGHT
Sometimes, we get these customers who see other people's websites who are all "flashy" and cool, and think their website needs to be the same and anything less is garbage. Despite how much you talk to them and weigh the pros and cons.

[oneofmanytims]

well put, imvain2 . . ..
(but the client is not always right)

[edhan]

I believe if you use flash in moderation (not overdoing) then it might blend in well with search engines like google. Of course it will depend on the type of business you are doing online. In the past, flash will definitely be not a good idea but now since search engines can rank flash sites, so a mixture will be fine (depending on your business type).

[astro]

It is the old argument as to who designs a web site. Eye candy is great but the excessive use of images to portray information is usually on sites designed by a graphics guy who has no marketing experience what so ever! I have always advocated a graphics guy should be nailed to his/her computer and given strict instructions of what to do, then left to work within the parameters set.

Image sites are pretty, but not user friendly if that user is colour blind or partially sighted or even totally blind, there are accessibility issues attached to flash. How does assisting technology (i.e. text readers) read flash? Hence they tend to be marked down accordingly assuming the search bots can read anything on the page at all. Try telling a blind guy in an image to click on the blue link! He may struggle a touch!

I always keep an eye on the big boys on the internet, Microsoft, BBC, top software companies, big blue, Brit and US government sites etc. If they don't use it, or limit the application of a technology then I avoid it as well. They are far better empowered and employ far better brains than mine. Good idea to use their knowledge! Show me a government or major corporation who has a website built totally in flash ? Then again build your site in flash if you must, then add user friendly/text reader pages as an alternative to give a choice. But do not expect G. to like it!!!!!

/astro

P.S. The client is never or at best seldom right, hence I sacked all mine back in the rat race and left 'em all on the hamster wheel!

[jawn_tech]

I agree with edhan. Some flash in moderation can enhance a site, to make it look a little more "pro", in some cases. In other situations, it's entirely unnecessary. I would definitely avoid having the sites entire functionality be flash-based. Also avoid using audio, or use it sparingly -- and definitely provide an easy mute button. You don't want people staying away from the site out of fear it will would be disruptive at work.

On the other hand, if SEO is unimportant, and falls into a couple appropriate categories, flash away. One example would be if traffic is coming in from offline promotions -- i.e., "mycokerewards.com", which is entirely flash... as opposed to "pepsistuff.com", which uses both flash and standard navigation. Both would stand to get large traffic from bottle caps, instead of online search traffic.

[trafficassistants.ta]

some friends of mine just went all-flash with their cafe website. will anybody ever be able to find good vibes cafe, in long beach, CA using the google search engine if the entire site is just a flash file ?

Hi
Flash pages are googleable,but you need not include all over your site.Flash will give you a good look and feel for your site,but you will be slow for the page load,this can be a disadvantage in SEO point of view.I suggest use less flash and optimize your site according to SEO perspective.

[trafficassistants.ta]

some friends of mine just went all-flash with their cafe website. will anybody ever be able to find good vibes cafe, in long beach, CA using the google search engine if the entire site is just a flash file ?

Hi
Flash pages are googleable,but you need not include all over your site.Flash will give you a good look and feel for your site,but you will be slow for the page load,this can be a disadvantage in SEO point of view.I suggest use less flash and optimize your site according to SEO perspective.

[romioaa]

For Google nothing is impossible

[texxs]

This used to be a great place to get advice, now there are so many people here you don't know what they are talking about . . .

O well, "such is life" . . .

[martine]

Hi,

Here are some suggestions to make Flash pages Googleable:

1) You should place your Flash files within HTML files. So you will be able to add your META Tag data and add some HTML above the Flash elements which can effectively be spidered by the engines.

2) Create a version of your site which doesn't use Flash. So you will get the best of both worlds.

3) I would recommend to use SWFObject 2.x using static delivery which provides best flexible way to publish your flash content. It will enables you to provide crawlable alternative html content.

[thomas09]

Hi Martine,

thanks for such great tips.