How Best to Use Flash on a Website
We're often asked how best flash can be used on websites and can Google read flash.Flash was primarily developed as a visual medium and we would advise that it is used a such, and sparingly. As Google says, use "Flash for rich media but rely on HTML for content and navigation." Used well, flash can enhance the experience for your users - at worst, it can be frustrating for visitors and terrible for your search rankings. Don't build sites entirely in flash - if you insist, create a separate HTML version for accessibility and for the search engines.
According to Google: "Googlebot can typically read Flash files and extract the text and links in them, but the structure and context are missing. Moreover, textual contents are sometimes stored in Flash as graphics, and since Googlebot doesn't currently have the algorithmic eyes needed to read these graphics, these important keywords can be missed entirely."
Google goes on to say: "Some websites use Flash to force the browser to display headers, pull quotes, or other textual elements in a font that the user may not have installed on their computer. A technique like sIFR still lets non-Flash readers read a page, since the content/navigation is actually in the HTML -- it's just displayed by an embedded Flash object.
Non-Flash Versions: A common way that we see Flash used is as a front page "splash screen" where the root URL of a website has a Flash intro that links to HTML content deeper into the site. In this case, make sure there is a regular HTML link on that front page to a non-Flash page where a user can navigate throughout your site without the need for Flash."
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