google search engine / flash

[astralaaron]

Is it true that having flash on your websites confuses the google search engine and ranks you lower because of it?this guy I know hates flash because he says google does not know what to think of flash and because of that ranks you lower..I don't know if i believe this guy or not? any of you know about this?

[falcifer]

Is it true that having flash on your websites confuses the google search engine and ranks you lower because of it?this guy I know hates flash because he says google does not know what to think of flash and because of that ranks you lower..I don't know if i believe this guy or not? any of you know about this?

Google InfoUse a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.If you have ONLY a site full of fancy non-text stuff, then yes, it's true. But if (and you really ought to do this) you make your site available to users with and without the ability to view all the fancy stuff, then it shouldn't affect the site ranking much.If you make an interactive Flash page, then you should make a non-flash equivalent, too. If you want Google to rank you according to your site content, rather than the design of it.

[astralaaron]

Google InfoUse a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.If you have ONLY a site full of fancy non-text stuff, then yes, it's true. But if (and you really ought to do this) you make your site available to users with and without the ability to view all the fancy stuff, then it shouldn't affect the site ranking much.If you make an interactive Flash page, then you should make a non-flash equivalent, too. If you want Google to rank you according to your site content, rather than the design of it.

thanks for the reply, pretty much what I figured.Q:where do you find the text browser(lynx) ? and is it free?Q:say the site is not only a flash file - logo at the top is flash and a flash navigation menu -just by having flash on my page will not hurt the google ranking? or does it just skip it like nothing is there?I also have a sitemap with html links at the bottom of the pagealso the flash object code looks like this<!--url's used in the movie--><!--text used in the movie--><!--<p align="left"></p>--><!-- saved from url=(0013)about:internet --><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="165" height="300" id="menutest" align="middle"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /><param name="movie" value="menu.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><embed src="menu.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="165" height="300" name="menu" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /></object>at the top where it says text used in movie, and url's can you add the text there and then the search engine can read it?

[falcifer]

thanks for the reply, pretty much what I figured.Q:where do you find the text browser(lynx) ? and is it free?

Lynx. Yes.

Q:say the site is not only a flash file - logo at the top is flash and a flash navigation menu -just by having flash on my page will not hurt the google ranking? or does it just skip it like nothing is there?

As far as I know, text browsers only display the textual content. So it would skip the flash stuff.

I also have a sitemap with html links at the bottom of the page

I would think that adding some META tags to your page, with keywords would help the ranking.And, again, as far as I know, then if you imagine opening your site in IE or Firefox, then selecting the whole page and pasting it into Notepad. Only the visible text on the page would appear. That's how Lynx would show your site, I think.But you'd be better off reading more on the Google page. I'm not sure the extent to which it reads the actual HTML when it's creating the ranking. I wouldn't think it uses much of the source, though.

[justsomeguy]

Don't rely on Flash for something like navigation. Have a non-Flash alternative menu so that everyone without Flash, including search engines, can find all of your pages. You could put a second text menu on the bottom of the page, in the footer. If you only want one menu, then have the menu start as an HTML menu, and use Javascript to replace the menu with your Flash movie. If a search engine visits, it will not execute the javascript to replace the HTML, and will instead just follow the HTML links. People with Javascript and Flash will see the Flash navigation.Google is working on being able to properly index Flash movies, but they aren't able to just yet. They can read text from the movie, but that's about it. It doesn't add a lot to put URLs or keywords inside comments or meta tags, most search engines now ignore meta tags, and most of them probably ignore comments also. The reason why they ignore those things is because you can write anything you want in there, and it doesn't make it true. I can write in meta tags that my site is all about how to breed German Shepherds, but that doesn't mean that the content on the page is about that. Google looks at page content, not meta tags or comments.

[astralaaron]

Don't rely on Flash for something like navigation. Have a non-Flash alternative menu so that everyone without Flash, including search engines, can find all of your pages. You could put a second text menu on the bottom of the page, in the footer. If you only want one menu, then have the menu start as an HTML menu, and use Javascript to replace the menu with your Flash movie. If a search engine visits, it will not execute the javascript to replace the HTML, and will instead just follow the HTML links. People with Javascript and Flash will see the Flash navigation.Google is working on being able to properly index Flash movies, but they aren't able to just yet. They can read text from the movie, but that's about it. It doesn't add a lot to put URLs or keywords inside comments or meta tags, most search engines now ignore meta tags, and most of them probably ignore comments also. The reason why they ignore those things is because you can write anything you want in there, and it doesn't make it true. I can write in meta tags that my site is all about how to breed German Shepherds, but that doesn't mean that the content on the page is about that. Google looks at page content, not meta tags or comments.

Thanks.