Our Flash widget is quite popular on the web. There is a link to our web-site embedded inside the widget. Does Google count this link as a back link to the site?
+2
A:
It may, yes. While I don't know the details, they do index Flash files since 2 years or so.
Here are some links: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html http://searchengineland.com/google-io-new-advances-in-the-searchability-of-javascript-and-flash-but-is-it-enough-19881
Lucero
2010-04-23 12:55:52
+1
A:
Adobe openly published a while ago the SWF format specs, so Google's indexing of Flash files will get better as time passes.
Check out this article from Adobe: SWF searchability. They also recommend reading the article from Google blog, earlier recommended by Lucero, called Improved flash indexing.
Last, but not least, this is partly related to Lee Brimelow's tutorial on deeplinking in Flash. Not the same thing, I know, but they're in the same neighborhood.
All these aside, if it's just a widget, it's not worth the effort. Try to embed it with swfObject or some similar JavaScript detection code and provide an appropriate alternate content. I'm thinking an <a id="widget">Click here to visit my site</a> tag, with a css similar to
a#widget { width:200px; height:200px; display:block; text-indent:-10000; background-image:url('widget.gif'); } should do the trick. This should act like a normal link, so Google should index it well, modern browsers will display the image, if the Flash plugin is not available (iPad, iPod, other mobile devices included) and the Flash enabled browsers will get the Flash content, so everybody's happy.
evilpenguin
2010-04-23 13:15:33