Is google anti-Flash?

Question

Google doesn't seem to like Flash content in any other way except writing text straight into the Flash IDE to get exported statically into the SWF movie.

Which means that any text drawn by ActionScript into TextField's don't get indexed?

Beginning at their Webmaster Guidelines, they recommend:

• "Avoid hidden text" - preventing hidden no-script HTML text for SEO
• "Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects" - preventing HTML pages redirecting to Flash
• "Avoid doorway pages created just for search engines" - preventing an HTML alternate website with all pages auto-redirecting via JavaScript to a specific page on a deep-link capable Flash site

So is Flash usable as a website framework at all?

Please post if you find anything allowing us to do SEO best practices such as hidden-text and redirects on Flash sites, in the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Answer 1

Until web 'designers' learn to use flash properly, I'll consider Flash 100% bad (well 99% + a bit more).

Answer 2

They are not anti flash, it is just their guidelines to help your site to get indexed correctly. Lately they announced that their bot can parse swf files and index flash content.

Answer 3

My opinion of flash is best described in my answer to this quesetion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/377285/flash-for-business-web-applications-why-not#377634

But Google don't appear to be completely against it: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html

Answer 4

Their web chat client is flash (at least on iGoogle), and I know they use it a few other places.

Answer 5

take a look at

http://finance.google.com/

Click on any of the stocks listed on that page. You'll then see that their main nifty tool (the stock chart) is a flash app.

This is a case of "Know what tool fits where it's appropriate." ALL flash websites - probably not the greatest idea ever. Integrating it as the functionality dictates - that's what they're basically saying.

Answer 6

google isn't anti-flash, flash is anti-google ;-)

Answer 7

Its not always that easy to decode the flash program to extract the text is all.

The same goes for nifty javascript filled content.

Answer 8

I wouldn't say Google is anti-flash.

Non text-based systems are simply difficult to index. Google indexes Office docs, PDFs, images, text in images, some text in flash files...they are improving but these are hard problems.

What you are asking for is Google to run the flash file and extract text from it while it's running. That can get very tricky.

Answer 9

Google does not index content that requires code to be run, same thing goes for javascript as for Flash.

This whole "flash isn't indexable and that means it's evil" is a rather single minded approach. Seeing how different types of content as say youtube videos or images aren't indexable by themselves, but still manage to avoid being "evil".

If your site relies on being indexed in Google (and not all do) you can't make the site all flash. You can't blame the technology for peoples inability to decide when it's appropriate to use.

Answer 10

So is Flash usable as a website framework at all?

No. Search engines are only one of the problems. (and probably the least of your problems, even).

Other problems with flash-based websites are that the user can not

• Bookmark relevant pages, because the concept of pages does not exist. You have one url, containing your flash app.
• use external tools to parse the page and extract relevant information (microformats, for example, but search engines are another example)
• navigate the page. In a website, I expect to be able to open a link in the same window, in a new tab or in a new window. In a website I want to be able to view the content in the order that makes sense to me. I expect to be able to click back or forward in my browser. Flash makes that impossible, because everything is glued together in one big black-box application.

Note that this is only if you attempt to use Flash for everything. Flash can of course be legitimately used to provide content (youtube is the obvious example here). But the actual website, the structure, the infrastructure that allows people to navigate your site, that can never be flash, if you want to create a website. If you want to create a web app, that's different, and Flash might work. But then you lose the advantages that websites have.

Flash is simply not designed to create websites, and luckily most web developers understand that.

Answer 11

Adobe is in the process, working closely with Google, to develop a search-friendly Flash player. More information is available here:

http://samhassan.co.uk/blog/2008/12/15/how-the-flash-search-player-works/

And here:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swf_searchability.html

Jim Corbett, an engineer on the player team, gave a talk at this year's MAX about the project, which I was lucky enough to attend (but which YOU can attend TOO, through the magic of the Internet, via the link to Adobe TV above), in which he talked about some things both Adobe and Google are doing to help Flash gain traction, and Google to gain usefulness. One of the things they're doing is collaborating on a "search player" that actually does execute code, essentially navigating through SWFs and passing information back to Google for purposes of indexing Flash content more comprehensively. Nifty stuff.

Of course, an onus will ultimately fall on Flash developers to both learn and adopt more search-player-friendly practices (e.g., deep linking, and so on), but that's to be expected -- we do that now with our text-based UIs. But to answer the question, no, Google is definitely not anti-Flash. On the contrary it seems more like Google appreciates Flash (they use it all over the place themselves, as has been cited) and see it as a UI delivery platform that'll only grow more prominent over time.

I happen to agree, but then I'm slightly biased. ;)

Answer 12

I agree with the writer of the posts. Flash looks awesome, but not very functional. I'm a wordpress designer, and have to incoporate it. I even have a little on my own site, but having a WHOLE site builf out of it is redic. Try keeping it to a header, or portfolio. Good post.

Answer 13

I get a distinct Flash-bashing troll vibe off this question, but I'll put in my 2 cents:

So is Flash usable as a website framework at all?

Flash is just a plug in, so this question could be reframed into, "Is [a runtime object with access to JavaScript] usable as a website framework at all?"

The answer is yes. With an understanding of the plug in and its relationship to the browser, most conventions from non-flash sites can be replicated in Flash. Google actually spells out how to solve most of your questions, if you read the pages you link to.

The question of whether Flash can play nice with SEO has been answered in commercial apps. I know because I worked on a few. That said, it takes expertise and effort to make the plug in mimic HTML page behavior.

The current major failure of the Flash plug in is in mobile browsers, but Adobe seems highly motivated to get that working.

Just because Flash sites have been poorly executed hardly means the technology can't support certain use cases. That said, Flash is just a tool. If it makes sense for a site, then use it. If not, then don't.

-edit-

For SEO, it's pretty straightforward: use the noscript tag to load the page with HTML content that reflects the flash content. On any decent sized project, the deployment process (or runtime scripts) would automate this task. The assumption is that is the content is important enough for search engines, it is important enough to move through a CMS and be read into Flash and the page dynamically.

For deep linking, you would use ExternalInterface in ActionScript to communicate with the browser JavaScript and read/write content hashes to the URL. This is SOP for any kind of complex Flash or Flex application. Adobe includes an implementation in the Flex SDK.