Google’s initial announcement was so incredibly vague as to render it all but useless. Developers came away knowing that Google was doing something different with their Flash content, but that’s about it.

While Google’s Dion Almaer suggested that search engines have always been black boxes and that it was up to us to discover what had changed through testing, just about everyone else was crying foul.

Google’s credibility was immediately in question due to the obviously bad advice it contained:

"If you prefer Google to ignore your less informative content, such as a "copyright" or "loading" message, consider replacing the text within an image, which will make it effectively invisible to us."

For the record, replacing fast-loading, accessible text content with a bulky image simply to hide it from search engines is never a good idea.

Google’s list of caveats in the announcement were similarly perplexing:

"Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed."

What types of JavaScript? Established best practice for publishing Flash content is to use the SWFObject JavaScript library to overcome bugs in older browsers, so was Google saying that it would only index Flash content that was authored using broken/outdated HTML-only techniques?

"We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file."

Any experienced Flash developer knows that if you are going to have any significant amount of text in your Flash content, your best bet is to stick it in an XML file and load it on the fly, so you don’t have to rebuild your Flash movie whenever you change the content.

Apparently, not only will Google not see Flash content authored this way, but it will track down the XML file anyway and index it as a separate page on your site! That’s right, Google will helpfully direct people searching for your content to the raw XML file that contains it, rather than your slick, Flash front-end.

All this stuff made so little sense, that many developers questioned whether Google was actually able to index any Flash content of consequence. Within a few days, however, the Search Engine War blog was able to verify that Google was indeed indexing Flash content.

Finally, after several days of developer outcry, Google admitted it had left too many questions unanswered, and four days later, it posted a significant update that is well worth reading if you have any Flash content on your site.

Here’s a quick summary of what we now know:

• The July 1st release didn’t index Flash content inserted with the SWFObject library’s dynamic publishing method, which writes the Flash content into the page entirely with JavaScript. The recommended static publishing method (where two nested <object> tags are included in the page) was indexed. Google is now deploying an update that supports the dynamic publishing method as well.
   
• Text content loaded on-the-fly from an XML file is not yet indexed, but Google is working on fixing this in the near term.
   
• Google will do its best to detect when duplicate content is there to provide an HTML alternative to Flash content, and will only display one of the two versions in the search results. No penalty is applied to a site’s search ranking due to duplicate content.

There are still unknowns here, but that will always be the case with the Google search engine. Though it took a few days, Google is answering what questions it can, and responding to developer concerns with enhancements.

Before very long, most of the text within Flash-based web sites will make its way into the Google search index. Nevertheless, uncertainty will remain over how deeply Google is able to probe Flash content for a while yet. Providing non-Flash alternative content will remain an effective means of guaranteeing your most important content a place in the Google index. It also gives users of non-Flash-enabled browsers (like the iPhone) something to look at.

Though Google’s initial message was pretty half-baked, the follow-up has put most of my concerns to rest. How about yours?

You asked for more competitions, so here’s another one!

We’re giving away two copies of Adobe CS3 Web Premium (kindly donated by Adobe) to the authors of the best articles about Adobe Flex and AIR submitted over the next four weeks.

That’s right — you could WIN a copy of the ultimate graphics package for web developers, Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, just by submitting an article about Flex or AIR. Worth USD $1,599, the package includes the latest versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash, Dreamweaver and a host of other tools that form the industry benchmark for creating web graphics.

How To Win

1. Write an article for publication on sitepoint.com about Adobe Flex or AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). We’re mostly looking for tutorials (either standalone or multi-part series). The article(s) must be original and must not be already published online elsewhere. We’re interested everything from beginner articles to intermediate and advanced topics. Also note that we’re looking for quality content (first-time authors might want to run their article past a friend or colleague before submitting).
2. Submit the article before Sunday May 4th May 18th, 2008. That gives you nearly four weeks! Be sure to include a headshot and author bio with your submission.
3. The authors of the best Flex article and the best AIR article will each win a copy of Adobe CS3 Web Premium (either Mac or Windows — your choice). The winner will be decided by myself and SitePoint’s Technical Director, Kevin Yank.

Submit your article to submit (at) sitepoint.com.

Some tips on writing for SitePoint:

• It’s best to concentrate on one thing, rather than trying to demonstrate how to build a complex application from start to finish.
• Try to adhere to the recommended word limit (between 1,000 and 2,000 words).
• Be sure that the reader has some useful code to take away from the article. Include a downloadable code archive with your submission if necessary.
• Please make every effort to ensure that your code is bug-free and best practice. Our diligent technical editing team will be testing your code, but we won’t be correcting them. If your code has bugs, we’ll send it back to you to fix.

For more tips, please read our Write For Us page and our author submission guidelines (PDF).

Oh, and another thing…

Even though there will be only one winner for each of the topics, we may choose more than one article for publication. In fact, if they’re all good, we may publish the lot! So even if you don’t win, your article may still make the front page of SitePoint!

That is all. Get writing and good luck!

“AP ran a story that suggested we were retiring our search technology — a story that just wasn’t true, and one that they in fact retracted.”

True or not, it certainly fueled the rumor mill, and combined with the recent layoffs, has placed a big question mark over whether Ask.com’s new strategy is a good one — a predicament that has had Graham putting out fires ever since.

“The fact is that we have a very loyal user base — in fact, our research reveals that our core users, which happen to be primarily female, use Ask.com to search for three types of information: reference, health, and entertainment. What’s interesting is that these users in fact use Ask.com three times more than any other search engine,” commented Graham.

“We are definitely still innovating. We still plan on being a great search engine — the best, in fact, for users who are seeking answers. In fact, we’re hiring for some key roles to help support this new strategy.”

There’s certainly something to be said for the fact that if you try to be all things to all people, you’re guaranteed to fail, and I give Ask.com credit for deciding to focus on its core users rather than its competition. But what percentage of users who type a query into a search engine are specifically searching for an answer? (as compared to, say, pictures, products, services, phone numbers…) How do you define an “answer”, anyway? And is it reasonable to expect users to use one search engine to find “answers”, and another for everything else? (personally, I just use Google for everything).

Two years ago, when the focus of the search engine was expanded and Ask.com announced they would be tackling Google head on, they didn’t seem to think so. For Jeeves’ sake, I hope they’ve found the answer this time.

Ask.com is being refocused to build … an engine that answers questions tailored to women searching on health and entertainment.

As others have justifiably asked, what’s the big deal? In the days of Ask Jeeves, the combination of being able to type wordy questions and have them answered by a cute illustrated butler was a nice novelty and all, but have they ever been a serious competitor to Google?

SitePoint’s own John Conde sums up why competition for Google is vital:

Less competitors in search means less reasons for the current players to innovate. If Google provides Ask.com with its search results, which is what is expected, and MS snaps up Yahoo, then there are only two players left in search. And with how poor of a showing Yahoo and MSN have made against Google thus far a monopoly is very possible as well as a slowdown in innovation.

Good news for Ask’s core users, bad news for search in general.

• Boing Boing: Was 9, now 7.
• Engadget: Was 7, now 5.
• Forbes.com: Was 7, now 5.
• New Scientist: Was 7, now 5.

Early reports suggest that sites which sell or exchange links are most affected. However sites that don’t fall into this category have also experienced a drop in PageRank.

This is a potentially devastating change for sites that rely heavily on search traffic. Post here if this affects you, or if you have any further insight.

Among them:

Blocked Domains
Now you can specify websites in our partner distribution network where you don’t want your ads to appear.

Blocked Continents
Yahoo! automatically excludes traffic from continents other than North America. If global traffic is important to your business, you can opt into this traffic.

Both are steps in the right direction, though the blocked domains feature would be even more useful if it enabled advertisers to block ads from appearing on entire categories of webpages (such as domain name parking pages), a feature that is also badly lacking in AdWords.

Likewise, the blocked continent feature would be a lot more useful if Yahoo! allowed country-by-country targeting like Google does. Right now if you want to reach into Western Europe (Germany, UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, etc.) you’re also forced to pay for traffic from Eastern Europe where the revenue-per-click is likely to be much lower.

I applaud the step in the right direction, but even more needs to be done for Yahoo! to catch-up to Google AdWords.

Type in one or more keywords and you’ll get a breakdown as to the number of searches over the past year, and the forecasted number of searches for the next few months. It’s a great way to do more accurate projections on your traffic and sales volume for the near future.

As well, MSN will provide you with data about the demographics of the people who are searching for that particular keyword, namely age and gender.

No MSN adCenter account is required to use the tool.

I think it’s a great tool for any budding entrepreneur or marketer to have, as the Page Strength score is probably a much more accurate reflection of a Websites importance than Alexa Rank or Google PageRank alone.

Page Strength is based on a number of factors:

• Links pointing to the URL & domain
• Position in Google for the first four words of the title tag
• Age of the Domain
• Links from .edu and .gov domains
• Age of the Domain Name
• Links from Wikipedia, del.icio.us, DMOZ.org
• Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and more

Give Page Strength a try on your own Website, or the next time you’re looking to acquire through the SitePoint MarketPlace.

Give it a try.

MSN has finally provided Webmasters with an option to override the default behaviour.

What we did was introduce a new option at the page level - a robots meta tag – that tells the MSN search bot not to use the DMOZ site snippet. This is something that only can be done at Web page level, by a webmaster, and is not done as part of the robot.txt file.

Source: MSN Blog

The new META tag for your webpages, if you don’t want your sites DMOZ description showing up on MSN Search results pages is:

meta NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP”

This is a great way to potentially enhance the clickthrough ratio of your search listings on the MSN Search engine, especially if your DMOZ site description is poorly written or not representative of what you offer.

First, the 2006 edition (update) of the SitePoint Search Engine Marketing Kit is well underway, and will probably be published towards the end of this year, with an upgrade option available to those smart enough to already have the first edition.

The 2006 edition will of course reflect some of the changes that have taken place in the past year, highlighted by movement in the pay-per-click marketplace, unpaid inclusion (Google Site Maps), and link building. We’re adding a separate chapter on link building, new interviews, and another new chapter with an end-to-end case study.

What will we do in 2007? Assuming that SitePoint doesn’t fire me for missing 3 deadlines already on this project, we’ll probably have plenty more to talk about.

Besides writing, I have been very busy with my online training and coaching programs. I’ve already completed one link building workshop this year, and the second is about halfway complete. I love to teach.

If any readers would like to work “hands on” with me on your own website, I am offering an online site workshop / teleclass which starts on April 25. Hopefully, you will already have the SEM Kit in hand, it’s not required reading but it certainly helps if you have read it.

Speaking of Google Sitemaps again… that’s simply the coolest thing that any search engine has ever done. You get all of the stats on organic traffic that you’d get from a paid inclusion program, you get to see how PageRank is distributed through your site, and you get it all for free. How cool is that?