Google and Flash

Until now Google has always had issues with flash and understandably so - Google reads text so how could we expect it to be able to understand a flash file, that contains no text!

A month ago, Google announced that it had improved the way it indexed flash files, so that it can now index textual content within SWF files including buttons and menus and it can also discover URLs appearing in flash files.

What hasn't changed? Welll Google still can't recognise text that appears on images, FLV files can't be indexed and Google will still have problems properly indexing websites built purely in flash. Google also has problems executing some types of JavaScript, so if your website loads flash via JavaScript, you may have problems.

So flash is still a big problem for search engines such as Google and there are several fundamental reasons for this:

1. Flash websites usually present the entire website content on the same URL, so search engines find it difficult to find relevant sections of flash sites.
2. It's difficult to get inblund links to relevant pages, because fo the above URL issue.
3. Flash sites don't use basic SEO methods - ie title tags, H1s, link text etc.
4. It is difficult to divide text into meaningful sections since flash doesn't use h1 or p tags. Also woprds are often broken down into their individual letters to create the effects that designers are looing for, making Google's job even harder.

Flash has not been designed for search engines and it is extremely difficult to get high rankings with pure Flash sites. Our advice is to use flash for what is was created for - not to build an entire website, but to enhance and to bring some life and movement to an HTML site.

posted by Rob Caston at 9:11 AM

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