Google is Indexing Flash: Hooray for SEO!
This is my first time referencing, and being referenced by, an Inspire blog post. Cross-pollination delight. Frankly, I’m honored. Hopefully the designers will let me sit at their lunch table now.
In case you didn’t know, Adobe & Google have teamed up to make Flash content SEO friendly. For as long as I can remember anyone interested in SEO has steered clear of Flash – which in my mind is unfortunate as Flash can provide a web experience that non-Flash sites cannot replicate. Erik covered everything really well, so I’ll just throw in a few additional thoughts.
Yahoo! Too: First, it’s worth noting that Adobe also passed along their technology to Yahoo! and while Yahoo! has not yet implemented the technology, Yahoo! said , “Yahoo! is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation.”
Meta data and cache: As Erik mentioned, this step forward is still only indexing any text and links within a Flash piece, it won’t be indexing photos (even if they are ALT tagged) or other non-textual content.
The same goes for meta data. These algorithms (I just pushed my glasses up) will not index meta data nor will Google cache the indexed information. I know there are debates on whether meta data even matters anymore; but when your site is Flash and needs all the help it can get – meta data could be helpful. But, moot point. Also, the lack of cache means we won’t be able to discover what exactly Google has indexed.
Fail, Google.
But that’s not all folks. I have, of course, saved the best for last…
Improved URL tracking: This is a big deal. Indexing URLs within Flash content was a key component missing in the crawlability of Flash – but no more I say! One of the best ways to increase your site’s search rankings is with internal and external links. Think of those links as a vote in the crawlers…eyes? (Mind? Soul? Psyche?). Search engines like sites with an “open door” and they hate dead ends. A lack of links makes your site appear static and unimportant – and the spider-bot gets tiffy when it sees your site has no friends. Now that URLs can be crawled in Flash, Flash sites should experience a boost in their search rankings.
That’s the gist of it. If you’re still interested in nerding out on this topic, I found Vanessa Fox’s post at search engine land to be very helpful.
Maybe in the future Erik will grace us with a post on how to design SEO friendly Flash. Erik? Yes?
Nooo… this is bad. Just what we need is another reason for people to be OK with designing horrible all-in-flash with music-and-screen-resizing and slow-loading Flash sites. :/ (But really, pretty cool!)
@Ben Carlson There is no such thing as bad Flash, just bad designers.
@Erik Olson I mostly agree with you, but that’s not all true. =) And that’s what I was getting at with my statement anyway.
@Erik: I completely agree. Now can I sit at your lunch table?
@Ben: I was just on a site yesterday that played the music automatically. I wanted to poke my ear drums out. So annoying! But like Erik said, that’s not Flash’s fault; it’s the designer.
You sound happy… this should be bad news.
@Ivan: I am happy! This is great news. Why do you think it’s bad news? Or am I misunderstanding?
You are right, google is becoming faster overtime.
Just like coins. There’s always 2 sides, it could be bad or good.
If Google indexes flash, there will be more and more flash sites (which look good), but it will take more time to load the page.
wow thats a great news for SEO that Google is indexing the websites in flash but it takes time to load the pages in flash.
this would be a good news!!! thanks for sharing
wow!!! it’s the first time i’ve heard of this
It is about time Google starts to read Flash. Any ideas when this will go into action? I am curious how the Google search algorithm will rank Flash driven web sites. New changes like this typically get high rankings out of the gate. Does it matter which version of Flash a site uses? Are old Flash sites obsolete or can Google pick up info from Flash movies. Great post. Thanks.
@internet marketing seminars - I dont think the version will matter.
As mentioned by Erik, a good designer will probably score way above the rest.
Usign too much flash may have very bad effect on website ranking. If your website opens fast, the user will like it else not.
Woooow! great news, I was in wait to here some great news like this.
This is good for seo…
From my point of view I fully understand google that they will index also flash contents. Flash became quite popular in the last years. But due to its bad search engine optimisation capabilities many site owner got rid of it again. Due to the new indexing capabilities I assume that we will see soon more sites that will have implemented flash contents.
This is a very good move on Google’s part. There are a fair amount of Flex(Flash) applications used by very large corporations, that if built the right way could take full advantage of this. Ive done several RIA’s for some large financial firms in New England, and the benefit of having some of the data crawled by google totally excites them!
However, there is one issue I must raise. Accessibility. Screen readers have a very hard time scrapping SWF’s and if more people begin to think it’s ok to build important content in the form of Flash, then I think we will lose sight of certain markets.
So you are telling Flash is seo friendly?
@Internetagentur München: I think you’re right. Although it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to get the indexing right.
@Adam Jones: Great point. I’m assuming there will be an html option for those who have flash turned off...I would hope people think to do that?
@wdc: According to the google machine, it will be “soon.”
Finally! This is great to hear, I know it won’t be perfect to start. But I have faith in the Big G to iron out all of the kinks. Flash is really becoming the mainstream for big budget companies and this is a much needed advance.
Nice post. I just wonder how its going to read flash - will it be like the ALT text tag - will you need to add keywords to the various elements of the flash file?
I will be interested to see how this develops overtime. We have some elements of flash on our website but then to limit them for SEO reasons. If google get this right it could open up a whole new area of web design and push the web close to web 3.0
I love flash but was told not to use it on my t-shirt site as it was a negative effect in terms of Google rankings. I am going to watch this with interest to see how it develops in the next six months and then may well rebuild my site completely. Nice post I am going to stumble it now.
Thanks
@Web design london:
Well, this new indexing method will only index textual content...so while you can’t use META Keywords (which, I think are dead anyway), you need to have textual and link content in your flash piece.
@cool - thanks!
I believe that even though search engines may index flash it is better to use html in many situations.
The load time disadvantage is critical when it comes to getting ranked high in major search engines and I also don’t believe that your navigation should be in flash because of indexing reasons.
Great post though!
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