Comments on: Flash search engine experiment - the results - updated again

By: Freak

Freak — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:10:05 +0000

Interesting stuff,

“Another thing I noticed is that the SERP links to the swf file, not the containing page”

To make sure the containing page is opened you can always use actionscript in the swf.

If(indexVar==undefined){
getURL(”containingpage.htm”)
}

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:41:36 +0000

Correct, Google cannot read Flash. I’m not sure about other search engines but I don’t think administrators consider it worth the CPU footprint to delve into Flash files to extract text. I believe there are sneaky (and not so sneaky) ways to obscure text in Flash files which could be used for black hat SEO.

The world is better off without Flash files in search engines, I think.

By: Roy

Roy — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:20:26 +0000

Oops, I contaminated my own experiment by posting the first secret word above. MSN/Live and were quick to index it. Guess that proves they were unable to read it from the flash.

By: TruFu

TruFu — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 04:36:58 +0000

Yes, I have read that post. I also used SWFObject to test stuff, but also other stuff. Now I’m justing waiting for the results, so it might take a while before I blog stuff about it.

By: Roy

Roy — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:10:59 +0000

Hi TruFu. Do you mean the swf might take an additional week when the page has already been indexed? Isn’t that weird? Oh and did you read my original post about Flash and SEO? I was wondering whether you’ve considered any of the approaches I described, or even tried them?

By: TruFu

TruFu — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:35:34 +0000

Interesting results. I’ve been working lately with SEO & Flash a lot and SE just don’t like Flash. I tried almost anything. My recommendation to the client was to turn the flash website into static text. Flash en SEO just cannot go hand in hand. But… I’ve been testing some stuff too and I’ll put it up soon on my blog. I’m looking forward to your results.

Btw, it might take a week before you see any results in the SERPs. Untill then, just wait for Google Alerts.

By: Roy

Roy — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:27:22 +0000

Yeah I know about Webmaster tools. None of my fake words are showing up in the “page analysis” but then they’re probably not considered ‘common words’. I’ve also set a Google Alert for the most likely word, so the moment Google unravels this movie I’ll be the first to know…

I use the WordPress sitemap plugin on this blog, but the xml it generates doesn’t include files, just links to each post. And I already know the page has been indexed.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:54:39 +0000

This is really interesting stuff! Keep it up!

Are you familiar with Google’s new webmaster tools? They give you a little more information about the status of indexed content. The tools work best if you upload a sitemap.xml, but that will probably defeat the purpose of your experiments.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/