As a sales executive I am often asked my opinion about using Flash as a means to develop a web site. There are cases in which flash is the only way to properly display a products capability or accurately portray a message but, as you will see from reading the following quote from a member of the Google search quality team, Mark Berghausen explains why flash has it’s limitations when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and should be used sparingly or in conjunction with an HTML based web site, not as a single entity. Again, this is from a member of the Google Search Quality Team…..
As many of you already know, Flash is inherently a visual medium, and Googlebot doesn’t have eyes. Googlebot can typically read Flash files and extract the text and links in them, but the structure and context are missing. Moreover, textual contents are sometimes stored in Flash as graphics, and since Googlebot doesn’t currently have the algorithmic eyes needed to read these graphics, these important keywords can be missed entirely. All of this means that even if your Flash content is in our index, it might be missing some text, content, or links. Worse, while Googlebot can understand some Flash files, not all Internet spiders can.
So what’s an honest web designer to do? The only hard and fast rule is to show Googlebot the exact same thing as your users. If you don’t, your site risks appearing suspicious to our search algorithms.
In closing I will say this, I love Flash! I love the animation and I love the awesome things that flash developers have done but in terms of business, I think it’s safe to say that if your site is entirely developed in Flash, you are hurting your Search Engine Optimization severely, balance is the key.
