> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 7:57 PM, Nichelle Walter wrote:
>> I hadn't seen anyone post anything about this yet - seems like a pretty big deal?
>>
>> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html

On Jul 29, 2009, at 9:05 AM, Nathan Gasser wrote:
> If you're going to build an all- or mostly-flash website and expect it
> to be valuable to Google searchers, it's going to take more work than
> this.  While Google may be able to find some content buried in your
> Flash animation, if a user clicks a Google result, comes to your page,
> and starts at the beginning of your animation, they're going to say
> "Huh?  What does this have to do with what I'm looking for?" and
> bounce.
>
> My fear is people will say "Yeah but Google indexes Flash now right?"
> and think that's the end of it.
>
> It's possible to build decent SEO into a Flash site, but it's
> certainly not guaranteed, nor even easy.
>
> Nate

Nathan Gasser
Rock River Star

http://rockriverstar.com/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert M. Hall, II
Date: Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: [PANMA] google learns to crawl flash

Great point Nathan.  

To expand on this - even with the advances mentioned, there are still
a # of best practices that developers building certain types of Flash
content should follow if they want to make sure their content can be
more readily indexed as well as to provide a way for that indexed
content to be linked back to in a way that is easy to navigate and
utilize.

Standard practice of graceful degradation and progressive enhancement
techniques to provide alternate and complimentary content are key, as
well as using things like SWFAddress :
http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/ combined with SWFObject:
http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/ or other similar techniques, to
actually allow bookmarkable URLS within large pieces of Flash content.
(The even better route is to use Flash to compliment you main content
and not be the entire content itself). Code libraries and techniques
like SWFAddress do make it much easier to prepare things the right
way.

Its worth noting that Flex based apps (A framework for developing
RIA's on top of the Flash player) have had deep linking built into
them for a while, and history management, etc. - for more info read
this:

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex_3:Feature_Introductions:_Deep_Linking

There are also alternate libraries like URLkit that make deep linking
and indexing very easy to add into your RIA apps:

http://www.insideria.com/2008/09/advanced-flex-deep-linking-wit-1.html

For anyone interested Adobe has an entire section of their DevNet site
dedicated to issues, articles and techniques for optimizing and
performing SEO on their content, including RIA's, AJAX and Flash based
content here:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/seo/

Thats where you will find best practices and some good techniques as
well as updated on how the "Ichabod" player and search engines like
google are evolving the capabilities.

If anyone wants more info, simply do a google search for the terms:

"Flash deep linking"
and
"Flex deep linking"

The main issue is that its really up to the developer building the
Flash content, to be even more aware of the limitations inherent in
indexing Flash, and to do as much as possible to mitigate them by
knowing how to properly build the content to be easy to index, while
leveraging all the available tools and techniques to do so in an
optimal fashion. Or simply to guide their client into handling things
in a different fashion if their is no other content or other avenues
of having their content indexed and that is a priority. This is
generally the weakest point in the process - if the developer isn't
aware of any of this, or sking the right questions up front, then they
are pretty much guaranteed not to have content that is indexable or as
useable as the end client might have liked.

Two other items worth pointing out:

1. Many of the same issues that face Flash for indexing content, also
affect sites that are heavy on AJAX, so a lot of the techniques and
thought process used to solve issues or optimize things for AJAX type
applications can be applied to Flash and vice versa.

2. Use Flash intelligently and for what it does best. I rarely if ever
build entire sites for the web that are entirely Flash - rather
individual applications that compliment or enhance the surrounding
content. The things that are entirely Flash are generally games,
kiosks, or applications that are either not deployed to the web at
all, or are done so in a manner where indexing isn't expected or
needed.

Hope this helps!

Rob

--
Robert M. Hall

Feasible Impossibilities

http://www.impossibilities.com/