Search Engines And Flash

how are the search engines handling the flash sites? It's been any evolution? Can Google read through them ? -cause the .swf format is available for some years now-...

Edited April 8, 2006 by realthor (see edit history)

As early as late 2004 Google made news saying that it can search and read through what is written in flash. And there has been much hype over this, even Yahoo also is learned to have been able index flash sites and its content. But the fact is that it can never be the same as those of non-flash sites. Even if they are index they seem to be in the bottom of the search engine results.

This way of analysis has been made and an article on this has been posted HERE

Therefore, after reading this article I have come to the conclusion that flash sites are not indexed properly like non-flash sites.

As early as late 2004 Google made news saying that it can search and read through what is written in flash. And there has been much hype over this, even Yahoo also is learned to have been able index flash sites and its content. But the fact is that it can never be the same as those of non-flash sites. Even if they are index they seem to be in the bottom of the search engine results.
This way of analysis has been made and an article on this has been posted HERE

Therefore, after reading this article I have come to the conclusion that flash sites are not indexed properly like non-flash sites.

can you list a reference to what you just said? i would like to review that.

hello!, sorry i don'+ know wha+ is happening +o my keyboard so i will replace +he le++er "+e" wi+h +he plus signus "+", well i don'+ know so much abou+ i+, bu+ have lisened +ha+ you can define me+a da+a in swf movies, if i`m no+ wrong, i+ is in +he publish se++ings, bu+ sure you can ge+ flash si+es correc+ly indexed in+o search engines and i+'s so easy,+he only +hing you have +o do is edi+ +he me+a da+a in +he h+ml code con+aining your swf, and you are done.

As early as late 2004 Google made news saying that it can search and read through what is written in flash. And there has been much hype over this, even Yahoo also is learned to have been able index flash sites and its content. But the fact is that it can never be the same as those of non-flash sites. Even if they are index they seem to be in the bottom of the search engine results.
This way of analysis has been made and an article on this has been posted HERE

Therefore, after reading this article I have come to the conclusion that flash sites are not indexed properly like non-flash sites.

Hey,

If you want your flash site to be indexed you should use internal links when linking to your homepage as opposed to absolute links. The problem is that google spiders will ignore absolute links in a web page because normally absolute links take you to another web site so the spider cannot finish indexing a site propperly if it's being sent somewhere else. What you should do is on your intro page, if you have one, use internal links only to link to your homepage where you have your flash movie or whatever. This way at least your intro page will be indexed so visitors can find their way to your site.

BY the way:

absolute links are like: http://forums.xisto.com/
and internal links are like mysite/images/index.html

Let me know how you get on.

Actually, I think you're confusing your terminology. Absolute paths are /yourfolder/ whereas relative paths are ../../yourfolder/

Actually, I think you're confusing your terminology. Absolute paths are /yourfolder/ whereas relative paths are ../../yourfolder/

Many people (myself included) use "absolute" to refer to the complete path of a file (e.g. http://ww38.yoursite.com/index.html, c:\foobar.txt) and "relative" to refer to any path that is relative to the current file or directory. Hence both /yourfolder/ and ../../yourfolder/ fall under relative paths, because they're both relative to the current path. To be more specific, /yourfolder/ should really be denoted as ./yourfolder/

"relative" to refer to any path that is relative to the current file or directory. Hence both /yourfolder/ and ../../yourfolder/ fall under relative paths, because they're both relative to the current path.

 

But /yourfolder/ isn't relative to the current folder, it's relative to the root folder. It seems there's some divergence of opinion on the terminology because a quick search on Google brings up tutorials that refer to both examples as 'absolute'.

It's a pity flash sites can't be efficiently indexed because they really can get multimedia sites in front of people, not like simple xhtml sites, even enriched with php and other stuff. Anf i don't think flash sites can't be enough text-rich to offer the information a html site would offer. And i'm so sick of the differences browsers disply css and that u need another hacks for every new browser out there...and here it comes the new InternetExplorer!!! bleah

and that u need another hacks for every new browser out there

You don't need hacks for 'every other browser', you just need them for IE.

quite right but anyway i was meaning IE5, IE6, and soon IE7. And i guess there are hacks for many things that IE doesn't implement the w3c way

Hopefully IE7 will require less hacking than previous versions. And luckily we've got conditional comments to target different versions with different hacks.