These days there seems to be a lot of hoopla around Google’s recent announcement that they’ve begun to index inside Flash Documents.
Where many people blindly see news “Search Engines Now Index Flash Documents,” I see a desperate call to action that “Flash Developers Need to Optimize All their Flash Documents for Search.”
Something important to remember is that search engines have been indexing HTML pages for over a decade now. It’s taken that long for the community to realize just how important it is to carefully craft their HTML pages so that elements are laid out just right, META information used properly, elements placed in the right order, links used descriptively, text carefully written with keyword density taken into mind, etc.
First, only Google is searching inside Flash. Yahoo doesn’t have their Flash search online according to some sources, and Microsoft & AOL don’t index inside Flash at all.
What these articles really tell us is:
- Search engines still cannot search for text inside a graphic
- if the Flash file has an embedded graphic that has text in it, that “text” can’t be seen and won’t be indexed
- they need to be constructed with carefully written copy that has been measured for very specific and targeted keywords
- they need to have specific words linked in a specific manner so that search engines can follow those links
- they need to be built so the copy is placed “high up” in the document so the search engines give it higher relevancy
So I say again, where many people blindly see news “Search Engines Now Index Flash Documents,” I see a desperate call to action that “Flash Developers Need to Optimize All their Flash Documents for Search.”
