While they have improved on a bunch of issues I think the most important point is that now Googlebot is able to index a flash file and also index the content in it even if it is loaded from an external source like an XML, .txt file or another .swf. Also it can map the flash file to the content and evaluate the flash page in its entirety. Prior to these Google would typically evaluate the flash file sans the content whenever content is being loaded from any external source.

The points below summarizes all the points that illustrates Googlebot’s capability with flash indexing..

• Googlebot can now index textual content displayed as a user interacts with the file. It can click buttons and enter input, just like a user would.

• Discover links within Flash files.

• Load external resources and associate the content with the parent file.

• Support common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, such as SWFObject and SWFObject2.

• Index sites scripted with AS1,AS2 and AS3 even if the ActionScript is obfuscated.

With this super charged Googlebot it seems that it is no more an impossible task to have a full flash website and yet hit the first page of Google SERP. However, this is a very recent announcement and it would definitely be better to play it safe with good old HTML if you have some serious SEO in mind.

Related Post:

• Google Starts Indexing Flash
• Google Starts Indexing Flash – Afterthoughts

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]]> https://digitalsrc.com/blog/google-enhances-flash-indexing/feed/ 3 https://digitalsrc.com/blog/google-starts-indexing-flash-aftrethoughts/ https://digitalsrc.com/blog/google-starts-indexing-flash-aftrethoughts/#respond Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:56:00 +0000 http://digitalsrc.com/blog/google-starts-indexing-flash-aftrethoughts/ I have been thinking about Google’s recent announcement of their flash indexing capabilities. these are just some after thoughts on Google’s recent announcement of the Flash indexing and how it would effect SEO. This document is made with the assumption that the readers are already aware of the recent announcement Google did about their capacity […]

The post Google Starts Indexing Flash – Aftrethoughts appeared first on Adwords Consultant India : DigitalSRC.

]]> I have been thinking about Google’s recent announcement of their flash indexing capabilities. these are just some after thoughts on Google’s recent announcement of the Flash indexing and how it would effect SEO.

This document is made with the assumption that the readers are already aware of the recent announcement Google did about their capacity to index flash (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html ).

1) In regards to content derived from external source such as a Flash file loading content from XML or loading an HTML file – This would not hinder Google’s capability to index the flash file or the content, however, the flash file would be evaluated by Google sans the content.

Now this leaves a scope for the content to get indexed separately.

If the content is in XML format ( as most flash only sites prefer to use) the problem would be that XML has no given semantic structure and any XML found will not have any meaning unless it’s loaded, parsed, interpreted and displayed by executing the SWF. It could just be a config file or may be some proper text and it would often be useless to the users unless parsed properly.



2) Adobe mentions that they have provided Google and Yahoo with a player that can execute Flash somewhat similar to a human being. A significant percentage of Flash sites for various reasons use a bootstrap SWF which loads the main SWF. Given the fact that this new player allows Google to execute Flash, it should not be an issue , however , a search of “loading filetype:swf” in Google tells a different story.
There are numerous Flash sites that execute a SWF to reach the actual SWF with content. This means you will se no content at all except perhaps “Loading…”

3) Google has mentioned
“In addition to finding and indexing the textual content in Flash files, we’re also discovering URLs that appear in Flash files, and feeding them into our crawling pipeline—just like we do with URLs that appear in non-Flash web pages.” –

So ideally it should not be a problem to have a flash navigation as long as it is text.

4) In most flash websites when you click on links new page loads but the URL doesn’t change. Armed with the new technology provided by Adobe Google can now follow the links and index the content on all the pages in the flash site, however, if the URL doesn’t change Google would consider the entire content to belong to the same URL. This can lead to..

a. A site with different types of service offering would have content for all of them in different pages but Google would see them as all in one page resulting in dilution of relevancy and keyword strength.

b. While searching for some keyword Google might show a search result with a snippet from the content in some internal page of the flash site, however, when the user clicks on the link the flash would load from the beginning ( home page) and the user would not be able to find the content he saw on the snippet. He will have to search through all the pages to find the content. So this defeats the purpose of serving content efficiently.


For the best user experience and higher conversion rates from search, Flash developers should be careful to avoid this situation by creating distinct URLs for each piece of content. This type of implementation would also helps the Flash site be more viral as well and it would be possible for users to share the same via email, Digg, Stumble upon and other content sharing platforms.

5) Google says
” 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.””
SWFObject, one of the common methods to embed flash also runs using JavaScript, does flash loaded using SWFObject gets indexed?





7) Looking back, we often created HTML alternative of Flash websites for search engines – will these be considered as duplicate content in the changed scenario?

These are just a few questions and thoughts that we need to think about and probably some of them will get clearer with time. Share your views on these and any other points that you might like to add.

Related Posts:
Google Enhances Flash Indexing

Read more on SEO at SEO Consultant India Blog

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]]> https://digitalsrc.com/blog/google-starts-indexing-flash-aftrethoughts/feed/ 0 https://digitalsrc.com/blog/how-to-avoid-stumbling-blocks-for-search-engine-spiders-and-get-indexed/ https://digitalsrc.com/blog/how-to-avoid-stumbling-blocks-for-search-engine-spiders-and-get-indexed/#comments Tue, 28 Aug 2007 08:34:00 +0000 http://digitalsrc.com/blog/how-to-avoid-stumbling-blocks-for-search-engine-spiders-and-get-indexed/ I have often been asked the same question by various website owners and other SEO enthusiasts and I received that same old question once again in an email from one of my blog readers yesterday. To summarize, his problem is that his website has been there for 3 months now but all its pages are […]

The post How to Avoid Stumbling Blocks for Search Engine Spiders and Get Indexed appeared first on Adwords Consultant India : DigitalSRC.

]]> I have often been asked the same question by various website owners and other SEO enthusiasts and I received that same old question once again in an email from one of my blog readers yesterday. To summarize, his problem is that his website has been there for 3 months now but all its pages are not indexed. While I replied back to his email, I thought it would make a good blog post to put the tips on how to get your page indexed in Google and other search engines.

It is the job of search engine spiders to crawl and index websites we just need to provide them with the minimum requirement that they need to access a website and that minimum requirement is LINKS !

Search engine spiders move from one website to another website by following links, so if you are creating a new website and want it indexed by search engines, all you will need is to establish some inbound links from already indexed pages to your website and you will be well on your way to the Google index.

Now the question is, if it is that easy even then why websites are often not indexed or often partially indexed ( just the home page or may be a few pages and most pages remains un – indexed ) ?

We need to understand that Google bot or any search engine spider for that matter is nothing but an executable program and they are not human beings. Webmasters often create stumbling blocks for search engine spiders that prevents the bots from indexing a website properly. It is important that we keep away from them. So what are the stumbling blocks for search engine spiders ?

First let’s talk about issues that would simply STOP the search engine spiders.

• Pages that require log in. A search engine spider cannot sign up and submit the log in information – they are not human
• Pages accessible via select form and submit button ( again the same logic applies)
• Pages that require a drop down menu to be accessed.
• Web pages that are accessible only via a search box
• Documents that are blocked by robots Meta tag or a robots.txt file
• Bait and Switch pages. Pages that redirect to some other page before displaying the content. This is basically cloaking technique and search engines can ban a website for using this technique.

While the above factors are absolute no-no s if you plan to get your website indexed in search engines, there are other websites that still face indexing problem though they do not have any of the above factors. Why?

There are some factors which might not stop the search engine bots completely but make it extremely difficult for search engine spiders to crawl. If you have any of these factors on your website that might prevent all your pages from getting indexed.

• Dynamic URL s with more than two parameters – Spiders find it very difficult to crawl this type of pages and they are pretty reluctant on these pages because these pages often result in errors when accessed by non-human visitors.
• Pages that are buried below the third level on your website. To put in simple words, try to make all your pages accessible from the home page within a max limit of 3 clicks. Pages below the third level can also be indexed only if there are good numbers of external back links to those pages.
• Pages requiring a session id or cookie. For human visitors the browser can retain the session id or cookies; search engine spiders would often fail to retain these cookies or session id.
• Pages that contains frames often makes the page inaccessible to search engine spiders.
• If your pages are linked from pages that contain more than 100 links to other pages, the chances are very low the spiders would crawl all the links and index your pages.

If you have read the above and keep these simple points in mind you should no have any problem to get the search engine spiders to index your webpage. And if it still doesn’t work give me a shout and I will take a look

Read more on SEO at SEO Consultant India Blog

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