Even though a recent Google gadget has provided us a potential glimpse at Google’s future video indexing technology, and even though both Google and Yahoo! are working with Adobe to get better at indexing the textual content within Flash movie files, for proper search optimization, thinking about your text is still king. According to Adam Lasnik, who is a Search Evangelist at Google, webmasters really need to focus on their text content to make their sites visible to Google and accessible to all users.
Beet.tv has a short video up with Lasnik, in which the Googler talks about SEO and accessibility. Lasnik spends much of the video talking about Google’s efforts working with Adobe to index Flash content, and says that even though Google is making strides in indexing rich media content like Flash, videos, and photos, webmasters need to think about text as the “primary means of communicating.”
Andy Plesser of Beet.tv says the key takeaway from what Lasnik says is that rich media publishers should always use descriptive text around their rich content.
This isn’t ground breaking stuff — anyone interested in building accessible web sites should already be concerned with making sure their text content and descriptive tags are up to snuff — but it is short and worth the watch. And if you’ll recall, last month we called the announcement that Google was working with Adobe to index Flash content a PR disaster for the company, so Lasnik’s video is perhaps a small salve on that public relations wound.
The video is embedded below.
August 16th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
He talk without eye blink (robot?)
August 18th, 2008 at 4:02 am
I think it is great that Google is trying to get flash and other rich media figured out. It may be a few years yet - but they will get there I am sure.
August 18th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Wow what a weirdo.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:37 am
This guy scares me. He will send the Google bot to your house to eat you.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 am
He blinks at 3:01. It’s a very firm blink. I reckon it made up for the rest.