Comments on: Google’s Flash Indexing Disaster

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:03:40 +0000

I am a Flex / Flash AS3 developer at a creative agency who prides itself on rapid development of innovative and visually impressive ui. For us, there is no alternative to SWF content. Flex has only deepened our commitment to this technology, as the framework is robust and, most importantly, consistent across all browsers.
These days, there is no excuse for slow-loading Flash content — all of the package libraries are locally installed with the Flash Player. Content that has not been properly staged and preloaded is the fault of the developer.
I am rather surprised to see (considering the popularity of FLV streaming video these days) anyone bashing Flash. Really the only advantage markup languages still have is their crawlability.

Which is what this article is about: While the title may be dramatic, it is true: My boss sent a company-wide email back when Google announced this, something to the effect of: “Our troubles are over!” But in actuality, nothing has changed: Google doesn’t see SWFs loaded with JavaScript (ie SWFObject, which is how all SWF content is loaded thanks to IE). Google doesn’t see externally loaded assets (ie, XML, which is how all good flash apps should manage their data). So really, Google’s announcement got our hopes up but delivered nothing.

By: shareitall

shareitall — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:41:25 +0000

I think it speaks well of Google that they are advancing their indexing technology, and responding to webmaster’s concerns.

That they communicate at all is a good thing, and unusual for a company so big. Ever try to get something out of Microsoft?

Daniel
entrepreneur blog

By: simplo

simplo — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:42:54 +0000

What people continue to not understand and complain is the fact that flash is not designed to be used for e-commerce and business purposes. Until Adobe designs an indexing engine for flash which can accurately direct visitors to indexed content flash will not be useful in respect to SE traffic. Kevin Yank doesn’t appear to understand some SEO principals and how Search Engines classify content. For example, the bit about replacing “less informative content” with images. This is done for a number of reasons, one is the fact that Google can’t divide a flash file into pages and direct people to a specific indexed section, therefore you should only use text for the most relevant and valuable content. This is a Flash problem, not Google’s or any other SE’s. If you use an optimized image you will have no trouble at all using text images. All your other complaints are moot points as well which are not Flash specific problems… This article is plain rubbish.

It all comes down to knowing when to use flash. You should never use it for a money site, your competitors non-flash based site will consistently beat your Flash site in usability, conversion and search engines. Until Adobe develops a spidering protocol for content and it will require all flash apps to be optimized, either do a flash and non-flash site or non-flash only. Adobe should be bending over to make everything work with SE’s not the other way around. It’s not Google’s fault Flash was never designed to be Search Engine Friendly.

By: Elliot

Elliot — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:39:02 +0000

Why did this turn to a Flash bashing party? Is it hitting too close to home? The last stronghold of Web 1.0’s usefulness is it’s transparency to search engines. Luddites can bitch all they want about why not to learn new technologies including AJAX and Actionscript, but in the end you will all be replaced by people who embrace all available technologies no matter what they are.

Get learnin’ and stop bitchin’ or find a new job.

By: Gel

Gel — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:41:24 +0000

you are all idiots, especially this kevin person who is bitching about google screwing up their pr…indexable flash (with a few flaws) wins over non-indexable flash no matter how you slice it. do you think google isn’t aware of these problems? they recommended images to hide non-priority info instead of text because that’s the only option right now, at least until they find a solution with adobe…how stupid can this kevin guy be?

kevin, i can’t believe you actually got a book published…this article is complete horse s***…i’d rather bet my marbles with google, you know, that search engine that everyone uses, the company thats growing exponentially ’cause they’re that good.

By: Shan

Shan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:28:53 +0000

tonybone, whils i do agree with you, it does not mean that we should just kick them why not offer an alterative? html only, then when that day comes, at least you didn’t loose any cliente becasue you felt they didn’t deserver to be on your site becasue they don’t have a fast computer/internet or whatever.

By: soly

soly — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:54:57 +0000

I think in this new changing world where the countries of resources have the benefit of having our dollar at a very low point, the outcome of that is, that there is a sales increase in our country. Therefore many see for very important to increase the photos and visual parts on their sites for the people shopping from the countries above. I saw many sites trying to focus on that issue. A good example of that is, a site I found, selling promotional items liftpromos.com where you can see them working closely to these important points. You can see it at the work they are putting in the pictures on the site. And many strongly support that issue.
Thanks

By: tonybone

tonybone — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:30:21 +0000

“Those Web developers using a lot of Flash content don’t seem to care if users are on a slow dial up or other slow connection ‘cos most of the files/pages are huge.”

While I agree that the use of Flash on public-facing web sites should be judicious, someone pointed out to me (and I tend to agree) that these kinds of arguments remind him of back when people argued against switching from DOS to Windows because computers didn’t have enough memory to run it. Being overly concerned about those still using dialup will hamper the advancement of web technologies. Let’s get past the 20th century.

By: Kevin Abs

Kevin Abs — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:20:54 +0000

So basically flash is not a good idea to have on a website? Google needs to step its game and algorithms because it seems to be stuck in the past. Web 2.0 is already the wave of the future and companies need to keep up.

sig..
workouts ab

By: Andy G

Andy G — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:50:22 +0000

Hello everyone.

I agree wholeheartedly with Fred Boulton. I feel Flash is okay if you’re showcasing visuals of some form but if you have any written information to impart it should be in a simple, quick, accessible web page. For my own use of the web I prefer to utilise the faster download speeds available now to make the stuff I want to see open faster. Of course, if I’m looking at a photography site then I’m prepared to wait for larger files to download to get a fully detailed image - that’s the payoff for wanting to view images. If I’m looking for text then I want it now because as web speeds increase there’s no reason at all why a web page couldn’t change as quickly as the page of a book can be turned. Flash is a visual medium and should be used as such. However, having said all this, all content on the web should be indexed. I think the problem here is that inappropriate use of Flash has made the job harder than it should have been.

As Steve said, they probably will get it right. But why didn’t they wait until it was right before launching? It’s very much a ’software company’ thing to launch something first and check it works later - a company like Google is big enough and rich enough to develop and test properly and they should be ashamed that they didn’t.

Regards.

Andy.