SEO-News: The Truth About Search Engines and Flash

SEO-News: March 24, 2011 Feature Article

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The Truth About Search Engines and Flash
By Jill Whalen (c) 2011 

It seems that once a year for the past five years or so, a
search engine representative will stand up at a conference and
announce that they are now indexing Flash. Website designers
jump with glee, and SEOs lament that all the work they did
educating their clients on why they need to curb their use of
Flash will be for naught.

Think of it this way: If Flash were a food, it would be an herb
or a spice. Let's say it's basil. While basil is great in
pesto, it's not something that you'd make an entire meal out
of. You use it to add flavor to your tortellini. And yet
designers around the world – as well as CEOs who want to appear
cool – want huge chunks of their websites in Flash. Sigh.

Of course, if the search engines truly are indexing Flash this
time around, then what's the problem?

Flash Can Be Cool

Flash sites certainly can do some neat tricks. People can
interact with them in ways they can't with a plain-Jane HTML
website. Interaction is certainly good, because it can make a
site "sticky." And people pass around fun websites to their
friends so they can make the little balls spin, or play with the
cool virtual cubes. This is great for some websites that are
looking to entertain people.

Your Business Website is Not the Place for Games

If, on the other hand, your company wants people to actually
understand what you do when they come to your website, how does
playing with the spinning balls further this goal? I don't
personally find it endearing to have to guess what's behind
each ball or cube when I mouse over it and it makes a funny
sound or explodes and perhaps shows a single word or cute
saying. If I'm looking to kill time, I might visit your site.
But if I'm wondering if you're a good fit for my needs at the
moment, I don't want to do a puzzle to figure this out.
Instead, I am likely to seek out your competitor who provides me
with information, rather than games.

Do You Really Need Flash?

As you can tell, I'm not a fan of cool Flash sites for a
typical business. But what about those who have a more basic
Flash site that does indeed provide information? For them, I
would ask, why Flash? If you don't need to allow your visitors
to interact with your website, then why not just use HTML with
Flash accents? Because even if the search engines are indexing
the information contained in Flash (more on this in a bit),
there are other reasons not to use it. First and foremost, not
every browser has Flash installed. In fact, currently on an
iPhone or iPad, Flash shows up as a little blue cube. Second,
many Flash-based sites use only one URL for the entire site.
Besides the search engine implications of that, it is also a
nightmare for bookmarking, as well as for most web analytics
programs.

So, even if search engines are indeed indexing the information
in Flash, my recommendation is still to not design your entire
website with it.

With that out of the way, I just rolled up my sleeves and
started looking at how Google is currently treating Flash and
whether websites can do just as well in the search results even
if important information is contained within Flash.

Guess what?

Most Flash is Still Highly Invisible in Google

To test this, I went directly to some Flash sites and pasted
exact words contained within their Flash into Google (using
quotes). Result? Most of the sites did not show up in the search
results. When I reviewed the source code of two sites that did
show up, I found that one was using the phrase I looked for
within their Meta description and the other site had lots of
text within the code beneath the Flash so that search engines
and browsers without Flash would have some meaningful info.
While that's a good alternative, the info they had was very
different from the info contained in their Flash. That's a bit
of a dangerous game to play with the search engines, if you ask
me. If that info is good enough for search engines and iPhones,
why isn't it good enough for your most important users?

Do You Want Your Flash Files Indexed?

The other thing I noticed was that even on pages that used Flash
sparingly, if they had words in the Flash files, a search for
those exact words would not typically pull up the HTML page
where the Flash was embedded. However, when I searched for the
exact phrase and limited the search to only .swf file types
(which is what most Flash files use as an extension), the Flash
files themselves did show up in the results. This tells me that
the Google reps were kind of telling the truth about Flash being
indexed, but that it doesn't do website owners much good in a
real-world setting.

Cool But Not Smart

Google searches for the brand names of Flash sites do bring up
the sites in the search results (note that their brand is
typically in the Title tag). So if that's all you care about,
then using all Flash shouldn't be a problem for you. However,
if you're interested in showing up in the search results for
people who may not have already heard of you – i.e., those
seeking out exactly what you offer rather than your brand name –
then you may want to rethink the cool factor and go for the
smart one instead!================================================================
Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, a SEO Consulting
(http://www.highrankings.com/) company in the Boston, MA area
since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen
(http://twitter.com/jillwhalen)
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SEO-News: The Truth About Search Engines and Flash