Google vs. Flash
As a designer, I loved the invention of Flash some many internet moons ago. Motion, bad site intros, and tweening gave way to easing, elasticity, gravity, internet games, full flash sites and flexible ads. Now, with actionscript, you can build a slick slider menu to complete apps. Flash video reinvented itself and made it the industry standard for sites like YouTube. For designers, information architects, and those in interactive media, Flash is your Desktop Zeus.
But for the search bots, Flash just looks like one large grey box. Like an image. Like nothing extraordinary. Just something taking up space in the code and more space on the page. It offers little in the way of information on it’s value. The H1 tag says, “Hey, I’m more important that my little brother H2, or the paragraph kids.” Flash says practically nothing. “I’m this wide and this tall and thanks for passing in those variables and please run me at the highest quality. Thanks.”
So Search with Design could really be called GoogleandFlash.com
It could really be about how the human eye and the robot see.
About which perception holds the most value.
Now, and in the future.
on February 25th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Unfortunately it’s worse than an image. Images get ALT tags, name attributes, readable file names AND Google indexes them for their image search. Images are valuable SEO tools.
On my side of the fence, Flash is what you do when the CEO sees your new design and goes, “Oh…so does it move?”
When entering a new market, I love seeing the top results with flash splash pages. It’s a terrific design tool when used properly, but too many companies make it their landing page and navigation, leading to poor site indexing. At the very least, a flash-splash usually means they have no clue about SEO rumors, even if they can design around it.
Of course, there’s always a work around and good designers have found ways to work around flash’s indexing limitations.
The real forward-looking question is how will SEO change when robots can seek out the flash files, decompile them, and evaluate them? It’s getting closer every day…