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seo flash xml

Does Google Index Flash Content ?

The most recent answer to this question is yes, Google now does index flash content that is residing inside flash files.  However, Google robot is finding it a difficult task to index flash content.  But still, Google can now see texts as well as links inside a flash file.  It will not split your one flash file into its relevant pages but will treat the whole flash file as just one page.  Dynamic content from an external XML file feeding into your flash file (also called swf file) is usually not indexed by Google search engine spider.  Unlike html text of which there are tools available to view how spiders “see” them, such tools are not available for flash content.

You can now provide alternative html content for flash swf files.  Alternative html content for flash files essentially means that by using SWFObject 2, your web page can display content, in html form, to people whose browsers do not have flash players installed, and also more importantly in the SEO context,  to help search engines index your content in the alternative html form.

As a guide, when developing flash content, use text directly inside flash movies instead of images (bitmaps or vector graphics).  You can apply “accessibility” to buttons and movie clips.  This allows you to give descriptive text to your buttons and movie clips.  For more information on how to apply flash accessibility, check the following link for Adobe Flash accessibility design guidelines :-

www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flash/text.html

Do you know how to “google” flash content ?  Under the Google search box, prefix your search keyword with the following words :-

filetype:swf

Google and Yahoo have been given special tools by Adobe, namely a special version of the flash player, that allows the search engines to search into swf files.  Having said all these, too much flash content should be avoided as far as possible because of the simple reason that search engines may treat flash content differently from how it indexes html content as a different set of algorithms are probably written for doing different jobs for swf and html files respectively.  But with time and technology, the myth that flash content is not searchable and is bad for search engine optimization should be dispelled.

The important thing to note is that search engines can now search deep into the text residing within the flash files.  Therefore, text should be typed directly into flash files when creating them, rather than importing them in as images created by other software like Adobe Photoshop.

From Adobe Flash CS4 onwards, a flash file can have metadata (the data about data) included in it via the Publish Settings window.  You can add title and description like how you would do it for html files.  Metadata is not visible to the site visitor but search engine spiders can see them, just like in html files.  Whether search engines do index what is in the metadata of flash files is yet to be confirmed.  They may index metadata within swf files anytime from now onwards if they are not already doing it.  With the popularity of flash technology and its flash player’s dominance in that segment, Flash SEO may be the next most important task on the pipeline as search engines are constantly being improved to be intelligent enough to be able to search within any type of files, not just html text files.

Keep in mind when creating your flash files that text created inside flash is mostly indexed by Googlebot (Google’s search engine spider).

 

About the Author

Ernest Chong
www.uptown-e.com
Article Writer

Dogs of Design: Winter Show Reel 2008

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