At last, FLASH is now visible to the all powerful Google. Been looking at this for a few months with some oddities appearing at the top of search that were flash files, now if only people with flash based sites would actually ADD more content then they might be in luck. There are many more little issues regarding this that a Flash programmer would want to know about. But, as you all know, I am NOT a FLASH person anyway, so it is not a big deal to me, but now I can at least instruct others on how to SEO their FLASH programming

Most people I talk with want beautiful websites. So beautiful, that it is full of fanciful script and beautiful images. Sometimes it is ALL done in Flash programming elements. These are really nice. But guess what folks… all of these elements are completely invisible to GOOGLE. It is better for Google if the entire site is done in TEXT… but we have to balance out being FOUND, with converting visitors to action. This is a careful balance of art and statistics. You see, with certain tools, I can see everything that is going on with your website. What percentage of people leave your site on all of the pages, where they are clicking next, etc… combining this with understanding how people actually VIEW websites is the trick to making sales. In an ecommerce setting, this is especially important as your whole goal of this website is to SELL… but you have to be careful to balance out information for them to read combined with it being too wordy… sleekness vs. information…

Psst, here is a secret… cause it is INVISIBLE!

Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; several software products, systems, and devices are able to create or display Flash. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, various web-page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich internet applications. Using Flash content stores the content of the web page in a binary file and the sections are not static like a web page. Thus, Flash-based content is not indexed at all by the search engines. However, this problem can be alleviated with correct web design. Using flash content in the main page of the site affects how a search engine sees the website. The search engine algorithms (the parameters that the search engines use to view and catalog the sites) cannot see the flash content therefore the page appears without content. Read this as invisible!I feel that Flash is beautiful but needs to be minimized in your website design. I talk to countless people on a weekly basis who lament the fact that their website doesn’t get any hits, and when I find out that their whole site is done in flash, it generally becomes a bitter pill for them to swallow as I know they spent thousands for an invisible site! I am still talking to a lot of realtors who are using expensive realtor website template sites that are built in frames. Frames are just like flash in that there is absolutely no content to be seen by Google! This is essentially useless cause if new clients can’t find their websites, of what use is this design?!?