Ooops! Another Flash/HTML Question

[LD]

My hosting client has a site with one big flash file which was created by another developer. Nice looking site, but with a recent redo, he wanted to keep some small elements of Flash in the site but also wanted it redone with more HTML.

The designer didn't listen and redeveloped the site several months aga into one big flash file and consequently it's turned into a messy argumentitive situation between designer and site owner. The site suffered a big hit in SERPs with the recent redo which fueled the fire, but the SERPs have recovered - somewhat. In the aftermath, the client asked me to look at the analytics stats to see what kind of activity has been going on with the site, but they are really kind of useless because it's pretty much a one-file-site.

He proposed that he might want us to develope an HTML version of the flash site so user could choose to view flash or HTML.

My question is this - according to posts I have searched in the forum, if SE's can adequately read and index full flash sites, would having a HTML version of the site on the same server and domain be viewed as duplicate content? I would think yes, but appreciate opinions and comments.

[Jeremy80]

I doubt the search engines would view this as duplicate content. If you are worried just block the search engine spiders from indexing the flash file. Although Google claims to be able to index flash files, I doubt this has been mastered and flash files still won't get good rankings.

[SnerdeyWebs]

You should offer both for those who ..

1. Don't want to wait.
2. Are not on high speed.
3. Don't like flash.. they are out there!
4. Wrong flash versions.. etc..

Oh.. plenty of flash sites are ranked most excellent and they are PURE flash :)

[NetProwler]

Many search engines including Google can read Flash files and can extract links and contents from inside the flash file. This explains how pure flash only sites still rank. So if you have a plain vanilla version along with the flash files, both the versions will get indexed. Yet it will not be treated as duplicate content if you take some basic precautions - like the way the contents are organized.