Why Flash Websites Are Hard to SEO

Seems like yesterday, but it was long ago -- June 2008, in fact -- that a Google Webmaster blog announced that Googlebot was now able to extract text content and links from Flash files. This advance, it was claimed, made it possible for Google to index and rank the many pages incorporating Flash. At the time, and ever since, both Google and Adobe have been stressing how much of a win-win the improvement was for both site owners and the "kingdom of the spiders," too. They noted that the new capability would improve relevancy in search results, while requiring no special moves on the part of Flash-wielding designers.

Hedging its bets, Google added in that mid-2008 announcement that changes would "take time" to move through the virtual pipeline but noted that snippets, the descriptions displayed beneath search results, would be much (and swiftly) improved. In the past, of course, Google was unable to extract any content at all from Flash files, so the description of a Flash page would either be empty or show the only text discoverable in the file. Often this was just the Flash version number, or just as commonly, a single word -- “loading.”

Dramatic improvements?

An Adobe press release dated at about the same time in mid-2008 spoke of "dramatic improvements" for search results and increasingly relevant listings for "millions of RIAs" (Rich Internet Applications). To this day, neither Adobe nor Google have published precise numbers -- or any imprecise ones either, for that matter -- about how many more pages are being "crawled" and how this has affected search results. Looking at how SWF files are now indexed indicates that there is room for substantial improvement.

Adobe continues to assure developers of RIA and producers of rich Web content that they do not need to alter content to make it searchable and "can be confident" that it will be found by users everywhere. This is not quite the case, particularly when Flash pages have little textual content. As numerous pundits noted when word spread in 2008 and 2009 about Google’s work on Flash indexing, the vast majority of Flash content is not composed primarily of words. It is built with video, images and animation, and no details about any of those will find their way into search results with this new approach. Google’s new Flash algorithms still extract only text and links, leaving everything else looking like the same old black box.

The "U" in URL

Associating a unique URL with all unique pieces of content is the way to go. The search process is much better served this way, with Flash implementations dynamically loading text throughout the user interaction as the URL stays the same. Googlebot can now track and remember those interactions, in a limited fashion, and when the URL is maintained then everything dynamically loaded through the user interactions will be tied to that single URL. Adobe insists that the Flash player being distributed to search engines allows their spiders to "introspect and navigate through a live SWF application" just like virtual users. Specially optimized for search tools, the Flash Player technology can parse all the various paths in a SWF-based application, just as it "traverses" pages in standard web applications.

In other words, when content that is dynamically loaded into Flash from, say, the fifth user interaction matches a search query, that Flash application is presented in the results. However, when the user clicks on that result, the content is not found on the page. Instead, the user/searcher has to continue interacting with the Flash application until the "fifth interaction's content" gets loaded. This might cause a quick onset of browser frustration and prompt some users to move on. For superior user experiences and the best possible conversion rates from searches, Flash developers and site designers should work around this by creating distinct URLs for all content. This also helps the site be more "viral," too, since users can easily e-mail, Digg and otherwise share content.

What this means for SEO

Flash has been a source of tremendous frustration for SEO professionals, with some arguing that text should always be HTML, and Flash be limited to non-text content, like videos, animations, motion graphics and illustrations. Others believe that the time is rapidly approaching (some say it is already here) when the “review Flash implementation” line can be removed from Web site pre-flight checklists. Who's right? Who knows? Work continues on this important matter, but it is no longer controversial to say that it is getting easier all the time for SEO pros to work with Flash-based sites -- and it will be increasingly faster and better going forward.

Moonrise Productions is a web design company specializing in custom web development and design. Whether you need web application development or a flex website, contact us and we'll get it done right.

Article Source: http://www.marketingarticlelibrary.com

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