Can Google Index Text In Flash Files?

[Digitalidad 0]

First: I posted this yesterday but I did't find it anywhere. Not even in my posts inside my profile. ???Someone suggested me to re-desing the website of the company I work for using Flash. I told her I wouldn't because Google doesn't index the text you put inside your flash movies. I proved my point with some searches of text found in Flash files found online. Now, I think Google has overcome this problem and finally it can index text in Flash files. Can you confirm this? If its not possible yet. Can anything PRACTICAL be done to keep the great ranking my site has in Google? Thanks!

[Nabb 0]

Google can index text in Flash files. The website Flash 'n' SEO shows what Google is able to index.

Personally I don't like websites only in Flash. It will not function for those without (the latest version of) Flash, meaning you're killing off a bunch (although a low bunch) of your traffic. It is hard to bookmark certain sections of the website, as there is often only one page - in which case we also have the problem of having to load all the pages on the website when it's unlikely for one to access them all (the alternative is using loadMovie, but by the looks of it, it doesn't index). If you do use one page for each page, then I suppose it's better

Also remember that Google will index the swf (Flash file) instead of the html. If someone from Google visits the page, you will need to ensure they are treated properly (viewing a swf from a browser often results in the object being full-screen). Another thing you lose out on is the progressive loading of a page - you can't really start reading the text on the page while it's loading if it's in Flash. You need to make sure that you aren't forcing the user to load images before they can read text also - either load the image externally or have it on a later frame to load (the choice if you use vector graphics from Flash).

The positive I suppose would be probably a smaller load for the user (and the server!), as long as you don't force load everything at once

[rpgsearcherz 5]

Just to confirm something, the usage of Flash in a website would be for a "static" site, right? One that has very few, if any, updates.If so, would it really even matter if Google would index it? My understanding is that sites that are not updated very often will not be indexed very high, if at all, to begin with.

[Nabb 0]

That's an interesting idea that never crossed my mind and it is probably true that Flash websites are mostly static - but you should note that Flash does have a lot of capabilities, and it is possible (for example) to have it read and parse xml files.

Edited February 19, 2009 by Nabb (see edit history)

[rpgsearcherz 5]

Having it read files still makes it a static page as far as I know. My understanding(although limited) about the way Google recognizes updated pages is by the last save date.For example, if Google is reading the following 3 pages...And their update times it would be like this(theoretical):Home : Jan 31, 2008Sub1 : November 19, 2007Sub2 : November 19, 2007Now in this scenario I wrote it as assuming that the two sub pages were using calls to other documents(like text documents for example) to get their information.Because my guess is that Google would read the page itself, and yes it would see the text information, but being that Google did not directly access the text file(or xml or whatever) it would use the original save date from the Flash file's page. So even if you had it updated daily with new text files it would still show the old date.I could be very wrong on this, but I do think that it is something to look into. Also, I would really appreciate a more "professional" opinion on the matter.I've thought about doing a few pages of a smaller site in all flash but this is what holds me back.