Flash & Google

[MarkD]

With google getting better at reading flash is it advisable to put a series of marketing messages in a flash header anymore. Presumably google would see every page as starting with the same content, which could downgrade the value of any given page...

Would tagging with "nofollow" help?

Any thoughts on the topic welcome!

[Brian Turner]

Good question - I've got to admit, I've tended to avoid Flash completely, and because of that I'm not up to date on how Google is using Flash and how to optimise it.

[MarkD]

Hi Brian,

the question was prompted by what I had read about google working with adobe to read flash. I believe that google can in fact read flash now to a certain extent. I don't use flash myself either, but have friends who do for headers etc. I think anyone using will now have to take more care, although I guess there are plenty of people out there who didn't realise that the search engines couldn't read flash previously anyway!

[TWD-Tony]

I'm currently working on a client's site which is totally flash (moving over to HTML) and I was shocked at how well the client did actually rank for their current flash site...

There are still huge advantages in using HTML over flash but the flash header question is a good one... But seeing as most website's use a header (image / text) anyway then the same would apply to flash as to any other header wouldn't it?

[MarkD]

Hi Tony,

I was thinking that if your flash header scrolled through a number of marketing images for instance that as google can read, you would have every page starting with say 10 lines of duplicate content. (I know some-one who does this)

Whereas if you used say javascript to scroll say 5 images (on the assumption that google doesn't attempt to read images for text) then that would negate any potential negative impact.

[TWD-Tony]

I don't think it would - I think it would take the image / text out of the flash at the moment it read it... I have a JS image / text slider on my homepage and it causes me a slight headache in that my page descriptions can alter for certain keywords depending on what the slider was showing when Google indexed the page - I actually think though that it has had some SEO benefit as I seem to be ranking higher since adding it but I obviously cannot prove this...

[Find Accountants]

I always thought google didn't like flash & couldn't spider it.

Has something recently changed?

Saying that I do know of plenty of sites that do get good rankings even thouh they have a flash banner. I think it is only sites which are built completely in flash that are harder to get ranked for, but having a flash banner doesn't seem to be to bad.

With regards to the duplicate content question; this is bit trick due to the duplicate issue, but if google isn't spidering the flash anyway, I'm assuming it shouldn't really make a difference.

If google now starts spidering the text in the flash & you don't want to get caught with duplicate content, you only option would be to build a different flash banner for each page!

[Brian Turner]

There's a new shockwave plugin that allows Google to crawl Flash content - but the word is that Google had found a way to do so even before the plugin went live.

However, I've also seen concerns raised recently that Google may be being picky on what Flash it does actually crawl.

The message remains the same to keep Flash to a minimal level - it's much better for the user experience, I think, to avoid unnecessary use.

[lishiguang]

Originally Posted by Brian Turner

The message remains the same to keep Flash to a minimal level - it's much better for the user experience, I think, to avoid unnecessary use.

Agreed. Flash websites may look fancy but a lot of times it's just too much from visitor's perspective. Visitors are seeking for valuable information, not those cool-looking effects. As long as your website is valuable and looks clean, simple, and professional, I think that's all you need for a quality website.

[bumfluff]

Just to throw another perspective out there, Flash on sites usually isn't very accessible. Google's crawlers strike me as similar to a person using a screen reader in terms of content they can deal with. I think that's quite good because it means that the more accessible a site is, the better the chance Google will show it some love too.