Comments on: Google now indexing Flash ?

By: The Big Man

The Big Man — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 10:23:25 +0000

You are absolutely correct Brian. Google have always picked up and indexed Flash files as well as the html pages that they appear on. Just as they pick up other image based files, as well as the pages that they appear on. I’m not commenting on having the file cached - if it is linked to correctly, it should get cached every time. This has been the case for as long as I can remember.

The article is talking about getting fully flash pages optimised, and them appearing on the front pages of the search engines. Its not about about getting embedded flash files indexed.

I note that on your site, you have added a noscript tag. If I may offer some advice? Your file is all inside an H1 tag, which can come accross to the search engine spiders as spam. If you want the file to be seen as an ethical noscript page, write it as a web page. Start with an heading in an H1 tag then a paragraph inside a P tag, then an H2 tag, P tag, UL, LI, H3, P. If you build it this way, it will give you better results.

By: B Hartz

B Hartz — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:06:00 +0000

Big Man —

Even with that Optimization method, you’ve got a problem with Google linking DIRECTLY to your SWF and bypassing your HTML code. Not necessarily a great thing…

Let’s keep in mind that many sites have pieces of HTML AND flash components working together. Google will now index those separately and show the results SEPARATELY — so folks will now be able to just click on that flash file in the results, rather than your website. Result: they’ll be seeing an swf sans the rest of your site.

By: Jeff the Search Engine Writer

Jeff the Search Engine Writer — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:18:53 +0000

Great reply thanks.

By: The Big Man

The Big Man — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:45:45 +0000

Hello Jeff, you don’t have to mess about with detection scripts and certainly don’t use a temporary redirect to take the spider to alternative text.

Simply use the flash content on the site and form it into an optimised page:
H1, P, H2, P, UL, LI, H3 P and include a picture with an alt tag and text based navigation if the flash site has been developed with more than one movie. Then place it in a noscript tag and add it to the source code near the opening body tag.

I’m not talking about hidden spam, I mean that you should take the text content that appears in flash, throughout the site, and form it into one properly formed and optimised page. An example of an optimised noscript tag can be found in the source code of http://www.derekheron.com

You obviously also have to optimise the Page titele and head tags as well, but this is the best way to go, as it not only lets Google know what the site is about, it makes the flash movie readable by blind readers, making it more accessable.

I hope this helps Jeff.

By: Jeff the Search Engine Writer

Jeff the Search Engine Writer — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:15:28 +0000

I have always wondered how to optimize flash websites, so maybe you can shed a little light, or maybe sense on this idea i had?

I was thinking that i could put a spider detection script on my index page, and if it detects a spide it goes to a plain text version of my flash website, which has all the flash content, but in a plain form.

If no spider detected, then flash boots up normally.

Would it be best to use an “if” condition and echo out either plain text or flash

Would it be better to redirect the spider?

I heard spiders dont like redirects? true/flase?