I read some time ago that Google can read swf files and use the text within them to rank the page they are on. Has anyone had experience of this and been able to measure the pros and cons? I'm wondering if those little touches of flash on a website can jazz it up and be a useful seo tactic in one little bundle of joy.
Hi, this is crap. No search engina can read what´s written in pictures....not yet. If you want to help google with indexing flash files, put your keywords in the file name. Peeze: Jab
Actually, I think it's possible to "strip" certain text information out of a Flash file (and if it's compressed, you have to inflate it first.) But this is a technicality. I very much doubt Google or any SE bot is doing that yet... seems like there are bigger problems to solve first. Plus, so many flash movies are just eye-candy anyways, and they're not accessible to all Internet users (hence the reduced importance to index them.) LC
OK this is NOT crap. I read this in an article in september 2004, it's just not well known, I think. You should also know that you can have text in a swf file that is not rendered as a picture, and is recoreded within the file as text. Example of flash file http://www.internet-marketing-analysts.com/flash_sample.html Example of extracted text http://www.internet-marketing-analysts.com/extracted_text.html Labcoat - your comment about it the format not being available to everyone is a good point, thanks. Anybody any experience of measuring flash SEO?
This would be easy enough to test, right? Create a small swf with some text (embedded text, not as graphic), and then wait for *Bot to index it. You could also test whether or not the swf being inside an <a href> has an impact (like it does with regular <IMG>'s), and whether or not the swf being compressed (or not) has an impact. But TBH, I still think this is a bit of a fishing expedition. Seems like there are much more immediate (and easier) things to SEO, and the potential "weight" of SEO'd Flash has got to be lower than other things like backlinks or decent/relevant copy. Just my $0.02. LC
Hey, just came across this: http://www.google.com/corporate/facts.html. So it appears Google does search Flash files... LC
google can search flash files, but there are alot of factors that tend to prevent it. If text inside the flash file is broken apart (animated) it can be indexed, nor can images or vectors. Google also cant index text pulled in by flash files. So, it only really leaves the unbroken, embedded text - which if you use alot of it will weigh down your flash movie and make it slow anyway. Also, anything that is full flash will only have i HTML page making it harder to get decent traffic. It can be worked well like this though. http://www.seo-guy.com
Yes, Can Index and Search Flash.. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=inurl:swf+"psychic+reading"&btnG=Search
As far as I am concerned there is NO Seo in Flash really. I use load_movie on timelines, with text and image files pulled in dynamically. This means that the text is not even in the flash file (if it was it would be far too heavy). Timelines cant be read by a search engine either I doubt and to get relevant content out of a flash file by a search engine would be near impossible. (a site with 65 load movies, across 9 scenes, with animated effects, dynamic jpgs that change every 2 seconds) - Explain how a search engine is going to index that ? - and once it has indexed it, how is a search engine going to rank it for relevance ? Ok, so somehow the succeed and my flash site ranks number 1 for 'flash design' - then the sound effect I have added actually say "fresh fish for sale' - it is too easy to abuse. Also, most buttons you make in flash will NOT work as anchors as they tend to be graphics/ animation (even if they have text) - So, that pretty much instantly rules out seo. Personally I now treat flash like a jpg name it properly and rely on html for rankings. Shame really..Flash has probably the most intuitive interface I have used on any design app. I built 2 sites years ago. 1 flash (100%) one html, needless to say the flash one still has 0 traffic (almost all traffic comes from the 'splash' page (and its header) that tests to see if you have flash. The flash site has far more text content, so when I do convert it to html it should do ok. I would like to see examples of flash with very good seo.. Feel free to post examples.
Cheers Design Agent. I wasn't really thinking of making an entire site in Flash and hoping that the SEO would be good. What I was really hoping to get at is what you have answered with. Well planned, made, and executed large scale flash projects are never going to compete with html in terms of SEO. I took a few quality flash training courses (macromedia accredited). I would by no means call myself a flash designer, but I do know how to structure and plan flash animations. It's nearly a year since I read the article about Google being able to read flash files. Flash is one of the most widely distributed 'browser extras' with 90%+ of internet users having it. I had just wondered if, when every little helps, having a small animation (which can add sparkle to your page) with the option of some embedded text was better / worse than a jpg with an alt tag.
Just get one or 2 more links, put a little unbroken text in the flash file and name it well, I doubt you will see alot of difference. AS I said Seo Guy had top rankings with a 'hybrid' site - flash for visuals and html for content - there was obviously a bit more to it, but it was doing very well - I dont believe the flash pulled it down.
animated gifs are not interactive, the 'sparkle' should only really happen when some kind of action is performed by the visitor etc.
FYI an email between me and G... They replied It's a bit vague, but they didn't say no to my question...
Even though Google is saying you can create two vesion of your site your still better off using embedded Flash with HTML. Use it sparingly and you will be fine.
2 sites (flash, html) is pointless anyway. SEs will rank html pages well - most visitors will therefore be landing on html pages, so why bother with the flash in the first place ? as most people are not going to see it. Shame.