Why Flash Websites Are Not Seo-friendly (yet)

By Author: Gary Klingsheim
Total Articles: 4762
Comment this article

June 2008. That's not too long ago on your wall calendar, perhaps, but is a geological age or two in "tech time." Computers and communications technologies like the Web have changed quite a bit since then, but some things apparently take longer than others, as it was in June 2008 that the Google Webmaster's blog announced that Googlebot was able to extract links and text content from Flash files. This would make it possible for the company to rank and index all the sites using that popular type of content. Adobe chimed in at the time to say what a win-win situation it was. It sure sounded like the previous problems were solved.

Of course, Google backed off a bit by adding that they would have to phase in the changes, that it would take a little time. The firm promised that the first noticeable improvement would be better snippets, the search result blurbs, coming from Flash-filled sites. Since, in the past, Google could get nothing at all from that content, the snippets would be missing or exhibit the only discoverable text (even if it were tags or version numbers). The fact is, there is now some limited functionality ...
... to the Googlebot Flash-reading program, but many observers believe the firm overpromised and underdelivered.

Two years on

Adobe has every incentive to convince people that Flash belongs on their Web sites and is fully indexable by all leading search engines. The explosion of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) means that a lack of indexing functionality renders a growing percentage of sites invisible to the search spiders. Two years on, there is still little data being release by either Google or Adobe on the number of Flash pages being indexed, the depth of the indexing, the effect on search results or any other metric. There appears to be quite a disconnect between the PR and the facts.

About a year after the initial announcement, in summer of 2009, Adobe started sending out assurances to RIA developers (again) that they could keep working the way they were working, and didn't need to alter or repurpose content to make it searchable. The problem, of course, is that this solves nothing, as many Flash pages have little text, anyway, and are composed of images, video and animation, the details of which will not be displayed in the proposed approach.

The search process would work better if a unique URL were associated with each piece of content. When Flash dynamically loads text during the user interaction, and the URL stays the same, Googlebot could track and remember those actions, at least to a reasonable degree, and remain tied to the original URL. Adobe distributed a Flash player to all the search engines to allow spiders the ability to navigate through an SWF application like a virtual user. When specially tweaked for searching, Flash technology can capture all the paths in the SWF application, much like it ambles through pages in standard Web applications and formats.

Workaround time?

In the meantime, progress has stalled. There are workarounds, though. You can use meta tags on whatever HTML page has the SWF file, but the problem with that is that search engines rank on multiple pages, content, linking, user paths and more. Your page will rank low because, as far as the search bots are concerned, your site is just a single page that links with no one and nothing.

The other workaround is an HTML mirror site, where you take your Flash pages and build separate HTML versions of each, stripped down without a lot of fanfare and hoopla included. You will then use meta tags to embed specific search terms that relate to that page. This allows the spider to crawl the entire content of the site, bringing up your ranking and visibility, and you can then insert HTML code to automatically redirect people who open the HTML ringer page to the Flash version. It also allows you to offer, instead of a bells-and-whistles Flash site, a simpler, faster-loading HTML version for people who have dial-up or low-bandwidth connections.

The impact on SEO

No one wants to have to do a pile of extra work like that if it's not necessary. The problem is, we don't really know when the full-on solution will be in place. Flash is still a sore spot for SEO pros, and some would prefer that text always remain HTML (which is text), and that Flash be restricted to non-textual content such as animations, videos, illustrations and the like. Others are hoping that the Holy Grail of Flash searchability will be announced, with evidence that it works, any day now. That day is not here, and it's hard to predict when it will be. In the meantime, there are workarounds, and there is also patience. Perhaps a combination of these is the best route for the moment.
About Author:
Moonrise Productions is a full services San Francisco web development company. They offer complete design services, web application development, ecommerce development, social network hosting and more. With New York, San Diego, San Francisco and a Los Angeles presence no matter where you are, we've got people to serve you.