Comments on: Flash: Poison Candy or Googlebot Food?

By: SlightlyShadySEO

SlightlyShadySEO — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:45:09 +0000

I will point out that this is especially interesting because it’s the first time we have access to the same parsing tools as the big G.
We know what can get pulled, and what can’t, with what reliability(via the API).
I also really do have to wonder about the potential for cloaking here(for naughty SEOs); has this been fully integrated into the algo? Is it compared?
Hmmm.
I shall find out.

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:02:41 +0000

@ Meshach: Thanks for the insight and welcome to aimClearBlog. We appreciate your input.

By: Meshach

Meshach — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:04:47 +0000

Actually, I am guessing that people will have to go back to the old ways of creating text in a Flash file, directly onto the stage, to be sure of it’s significance but that may be too obvious. All this newer placement of Flash® text, using variables, XML, etc… may be slicker but, I imagine, not good for the relevancy.

By: Meshach

Meshach — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:44:44 +0000

Thanks for the info, Marty. It’s been interesting revisiting this question after all these years. (I started my first full Flash sites in 1998 with V.3) I am guessing this will open up a pretty big business for some smart people. Once a few sharp people do some testing it will be a new frontier, I imagine.

-M

By: Chris Dohman

Chris Dohman — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:07:53 +0000

Found it Marty, thanks for the tip.

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:05:52 +0000

@Michael: Thanks for the insightful comment.
@ Chris: Thanks…and I saw one other related Sphinn thread you can hunt down.

By: Chris Dohman

Chris Dohman — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:59:57 +0000

For the Sphinning folks out there, here’s where you can Sphinn the CNET article: http://sphinn.com/story/22159

cheers marty!

By: michael streko

michael streko — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:43:57 +0000

I personally do not enjoy dancing the fine gray line of cloaking with flash. I have a client whose website is really 90% flash - so I have no choice but to use the noscript tags and actually type out what eash flash says.

Within the last 2 months i have noticed that the flashes are getting indexed, but only the title of the flash file and some of the basic text. I guess its going to be a matter of making sure your flash is “dumbed down” for the search engines in order to get them fully indexed…

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:24:09 +0000

Great… hoped this would not be Sphunn. I FOUND Stephan’s post on Sphinn and wanted our clients to know.

By: Chris Dohman

Chris Dohman — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:21:20 +0000

Thanks for pointing this out Marty. Sorry though, I sphunn Stephen’s CNET post, figured I should go with the source.

It will be interesting to see how the indexing develops on this one.

Thanks again.
Chris