Adobe Help Ses Index Flash, Still Won't Help! Options

[projectphp]

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/323746571/

Adobe has created a special Flash player for the search engines that acts like a virtual user going through each application. It actually goes through the runtime of each Flash application and translates it into something the search engines can understand. So all of those fancy interactive Flash Websites and other rich Internet applications that have been invisible to search engines, can now be seen by them.

Seen != ranked, for those who wonde at my snarky topic description.

Still, Kudos to Adobe for doing something (Anything) even if it is BS and will be exagerated by every flash developer, to teh detriment of many a site owner.

[nethy]

Thanks for sharing.
Certainly "Seen != ranked" But more certainly unseen = unranked.

Bu even if an SE knows the content is there, they still can't link to it if the content is deep inside the flash application/website. Am I missing something or will engines need to choose between linking to the 'homepage' or nothing at all?
Maybe this'll effect flash elements on a page more it effects complete flash sites. At least at first.

[nethy]

Covered Here:
http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/07/01/flash...-what-you-need/
Basically same ole' conclusion. Flash sites aren't for users. Still no reason to use em.

Interesting point. This'll make it harder to sell a 'no flash sites' policy.

"They are disadvantaged in Google" or "Google has a hard time linking to the right part of the site" are not as solid as "Google doesn't know it's there."

[Jill]

I've rarely seen anything actually worth indexing that's in Flash. Makes me wonder what all the hoopla is about.

[nethy]

I've rarely seen anything actually worth indexing that's in Flash. Makes me wonder what all the hoopla is about.

Well, this may mean that more flash sites will pop up. You used to be able to make the objection 'it's invisible.' Now you can't. A lot of owners/execs like flash sites. They think they're more impressive.

Makes good sense from Adobe's side of things. It removes a big objection to flash.

[Jill]

Well it's all good then. Will make them much easier to optimize them.

Assuming this indexing actually works. It has been my understanding that the search engines had the capability of indexing the content in flash for ages. I just assumed there was nothing worth indexing so they didn't make it much of a high priority.

[nethy]

I think it would be dangerous (from their perspective) to assume where there is worthwhile content. I don't think the technology should come into it if it's avoidable. There are definitely sites in flash that otherwise would be getting at least some traffic from the engines if they weren't flash. So presumably that is a shortcoming. Being in flash doesn't make them less relevant.

Theoretically, I suppose its possible to have a library of brilliant articles contained within flash. Why not?

As an aside, how are they coming along with Ajax. I guess there could be a lot of similar problems. I mean sites that use a Google reader like interface to contain & display information rich content. But the majority of that content would not be available when the page loads. With flash it seems like it would be wrong from a user perspective to use it as a means of displaying a lot of content the same cannot be said of this type of site. Though I haven't seen too much of this in use for 'normal' sites, I could see it taking off.

I know very little about the technology, but wouldn't they need to start executing javascript to access this kind of content.
then they'd be left with the same problem. How do you link to the content?

[Randy]

As an aside, how are they coming along with Ajax.
...
I know very little about the technology, but wouldn't they need to start executing javascript to access this kind of content.

No problems at all with Ajax if the code jockey knows what they're doing and builds the application correctly. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink1.gif) Ajax can be made to be 100% accessible and 100% search engine friendly, and it's not even that hard to do.

[nethy]

No problems at all with Ajax if the code jockey knows what they're doing and builds the application correctly. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink1.gif) Ajax can be made to be 100% accessible and 100% search engine friendly, and it's not even that hard to do.

But since 'Ajax' is a bit ill defined, let me ask a bit more. Are there things that you can do with Ajax that are impossible to SEO?
For example:
Say we make a clone of 'Google Reader' that to act as a site. Say Jill moved all the [url=http://www.highrankings.com/newsletter/]Newsletter Archives[/url] to such a site or section of a site. A Newspaper would probably be a better candidate for such Would this be accessible? If so, how would individual articles be linked to from the search engines?

As I said, I know very little about this but this seems to be a problem. Doesn't Ajax mean using javascript to load new content onto the page (as opposed to making content loaded at the time of page load visible) dynamically. If so, doesn't that mean you need JS to access this content?

[Randy]

It all depends upon how you code it Nethy. If you force every single user through a javascript routine, it's not going to be accessible. Either for all real people or the search engines.

However there are a couple of ways to make it accessible for real people, as well as accessible for the engines.

One way to do this is to use a normal a href link like is done on every other site, then utilize javascripts onClick event to fire the Ajax routines. The onClick will override the href link if JS is enabled in the users browser, or they'll get the plain page if not. That's the way some do it.

A more sophisticated, although not that much harder way to do it is have normal links and no onClicks at all. Then have your Ajax script capture the click and subplant the href call if the js/ajax routine fires, ensuring the visitor is on a js enabled browser.

It's actually a lot harder to explain than it is to do.

So how about an example from one of the best and easiest to understand Ajax books I've seen out there: Bulletproof Ajax by Jeremy Keith. As part of the book and part of his site he's cobbled together a quick example of an Ajax web store application that not only works, but is 100% search engine friendly. Go ahead and try it with JS disabled. The only difference you'll see is the page actually reloading instead of just a section of the page being refreshed by Ajax. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink1.gif)

Jeremy even makes the source files available for free if you want to grab 'em and play with 'em. The hijax.js file is the one that does the heavy lifting of capturing the clicks on href's and form's.

[lenwood]

All of this is good discussion, but there's still a couple of points that are unadressed by Google's recent news.

1. One of the points of SEOing flash content is to improve the accessibility of the site. Your run of the mill coded website can be read by everyone, typical web users, search engines, blind people, everyone. Sites built with flash can only be viewed by flash-enabled browsers.

2. Google is by far the largest search engine, so this will definitely help. My personal blog still gets a significant amount of traffic through MSN and Yahoo!. If your site is flash, you'll still be missing out on traffic.

3. Just because Google is indexing the site doesn't mean that it shouldn't be SEO'd. You're still going to need keywords, page titles...

I think its awesome that Google is taking this step. Its overdue, really. All of the arguments that I've presented to clients still stand.

[SEMSEO]

Does that mean all SEO must learn how to use Flash? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hmm.gif)

[Randy]

Does that mean all SEO must learn how to use Flash?

Not just no, but Hell no! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ranting.gif)

[Jill]

Does that mean all SEO must learn how to use Flash? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hmm.gif)

Huh? Not sure how you'd reach that conclusion!

Did it say somewhere that Flash websites will be given preference over non-flash ones? I doubt it!