Comments on: Search-Friendly Flash?

By: Google I/O: New Advances In The Searchability of JavaScript and Flash, But Is It Enough?

Fri, 29 May 2009 18:11:39 +0000

[...] Similar issues exist with Adobe technologies such as Flash and Flex. Search engines have historically had trouble crawling Flash. Last year, Adobe made a search crawler version of the Flash player available to Google so it could extract text and links, and more recently launched an SEO knowledge center, but problems remain. [...]

By: Scoring the Superbowl Ads: Do Broadcast Marketers Get Online Acquisition?

Scoring the Superbowl Ads: Do Broadcast Marketers Get Online Acquisition? — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:16:59 +0000

[...] If you use Flash, make sure you’re using it in a search-friendly way. [...]

By: Can Searchers Find the Superbowl?

Can Searchers Find the Superbowl? — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:45:41 +0000

[...] it also reinforces the advice that site owners have to be aware of the limitations of technologies such as Flash. The fact is that if you want your site’s content to be found by searchers, you have to make [...]

By: Ardan Michael BLUM

Ardan Michael BLUM — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:15:31 +0000

Flash is DIGESTED. Serving a dish of Flash to Google 2 times a day starts as in the old days with the most important and still in my view essential NAMING (right clicking on the SWF files BEFORE being placed on the server) of title and content info and within the file in terms of accessibility and properties. And using BITS of Flash across HTML pages – cutting the flash into bits on a single page … then the “new” power of engine digesting is enhanced. In other words you have to make a nice sauce — a nice presentation before the engines take your flash 2 times a day as a meal.

By: 2009 Google Flash SEO | beu blog

2009 Google Flash SEO | beu blog — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:09:25 +0000

[...] digestible by search engines and can be translated to determine relevancy for textual queries. As Vanessa Fox recently pointed out, the lack of structural meta data in Flash is a real [...]

By: Media Influence

Media Influence — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:04:08 +0000

Great post Vanessa. Been reading up on all the various opinions on Google’s ability to read flash, this one is very comprehensive. thanks

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 05:48:27 +0000

There’s even another problem, and that’s Flex. Gone are the days when all text could be extracted by reading the SWF text tags. Nowadays, all meaningful text and link structure in Flex applications are usually embedded deep within object hierarchies in AS3 bytecode, which requires the ASVM to read. Perhaps that’s what Adobe is distributing to search engines?

It would be nice if Adobe/Google was clear on exactly how the crawler searches through AS3 bytecode. Does it resolve content that is made through remoting calls? Does it find content that is only accessible through mouse clicks? Does it just search through the object graph for text fields? These questions are really important for SEO.

By: July ‘08: Best Search/Marketing Posts

July ‘08: Best Search/Marketing Posts — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:20:41 +0000

[...] Vanessa Fox: Search-Friendly Flash? [...]

By: An Engaging Collection Of Links - This Month In SEO - 7/08 | TheVanBlog | Van SEO Design

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:26:04 +0000

[...] Search-Friendly Flash? [...]

By: thegoldenhat

thegoldenhat — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:26:42 +0000

Excellent run-down! I agree that the flash crawling buzz is still largely misinterpreted. The limitations of flash and JavaScript-executed flash are still extensive. With my clients I haven’t changed my tone. If they have flash navigation, compliment it with text navigation in the sidebar or footer, and with the html sitemap.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of months as more and more sites that are flash heavy report on any crawling or indexing improvements.