Flash vs Search Engines
March 5th, 2006 . by polyGeekThe Flash platform has come a long way. But there is one big hurdle left: better integration with search engines. That’s something that Flash and AJAX both have with.
I created a test site to see how a spider might index a Flash based website. There isn’t much to on the site. Just some reviews of SciFi movies and such. But the site is bookmarkable. So far it hasn’t been crawled or if it has it doesn’t return anything at Google. When I do a site search it doesn’t bring back any results.
If you check it out you can see that it is about as simple as any Flash site could be. Everything is text, including the links. No MovieClips to confuse things. So I’d consider this a best case scenario for indexing - if it would just get crawled.
If you feel like burying a link on your site to the SciFi.VectorSpaceStudios.com site then please do so. Maybe getting a few more links out there to it would help.
Of course anything that I discover I’ll report here. My dream is that it will get indexed by Google and I’ll be able to click a link there that will take me into the site to the content that I searched for. If that happens I’ll make the FLA for the site available so others can follow suit. I’d love to see people out there developing sites in Flash that are indexed and bookmarkable. That would help Flash clear it’s last major hurdle - until we find something else. :-)
well, how frakking cool is THAT! I am keen to know whether you get indexed. very keen. you just keep on rocking honey.
sympleton.com is pure Flash. It is bookmarkable, the browser’s “Back” and “FWD” buttons are fully functional (try it) and it is indexable by the major search engines.
Try Googling the following, for example: “InfiniTree was designed to offer the best of both worlds”.
InfiniTree (my app) creates Flash websites that automatically contain all of this functionality. In addition you can create Flash motion graphics and lots more - all just using your browser.
The site is not yet complete and I’m currently creating an online demo…
InfiniTree works with FireFox and IE6 so far - with other browser compatabilities in the works.
Joel - that is some great work on your website. I hope you are able to parlay that into some good contracts. Hell, keep it up and maybe you’ll get bought out for a few million. :-)
You’re back button capabilities are sweet. I think I’m doing roughly the same thing with my photography website - XanaduWest.com. That site is bookmarkable but the back/forward buttons don’t work. What I’m doing is using Javascript to read the location.hash (I think that’s it) and passing that to the swf so that you go to the correct photo. So to add the back/forward functionality all I would have to do is listen to the location.hash and when it changes notify the swf.
As for SEO: I downloaded the swf2html.exe from Flash and discovered that there is a big zero on my SciFi site when spiders look at it. The reason is that all the data comes from XML files.
From what I gather the next step would be to write some script that will detect if a spider is requesting data and send it a substitute.
By the way, did you know that Flex has build in back/forward functionality? Way cool.
Thanks again for the info and good luck with your site.
wow, Joel, that sounds like great functionality!
Dan, what kind of substitute? That sounds like a lot of work that defeats the purpose. but you would know more, I am just guessing here.
I haven’t looked into how to detect for a spider and then code for that. I have another idea in mind that would take the content from the Flash file and populate a
well good luck. very few people don’t want to attract uninvited traffic. so it’s an issue for sure.
did this come up at Flash Forward?
No, there was no mention of this at FF06. Not that I heard anyway.
I would think that would be a big topic among flash people.
Agreed, girlgeek. It SHOULD be a major topic.
While basic functionality like the “Back” and “FWD” buttons, SEO and bookmarking are doable with the latest versions of the major browsers, the techniques used to achieve these functions are cumbersome and time consuming. The lack of these features is a deal-breaker for many developers and users - and justifiably so. Flash will never be the mainstream web application platform it deserves to be without these basic functions.
Oz said: “From what I gather the next step would be to write some script that will detect if a spider is requesting data and send it a substitute.”
That’s how I implemented SEO and it works beautifully for Google (though I just changed everything on the site so I’ll have to wait again for re-indexing).
I’m using PHP and looking at this variable:
$_SERVER[’HTTP_USER_AGENT’]
Here’s some very useful Javascript in case you haven’t seen this yet:
http://www.unfocus.com/projects/HistoryKeeper/
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