Understanding the facts about Adobe Flash and SEO

There are plenty of rumors, myths, and semi-myths about Flash and SEO floating around on the web. The following are some facts about SWF content on the web. Is SWF content searchable? Many, if not most, people in the world of web design think SWF content is not searchable. Are they right? It really depends on what you mean by "searchable." At the time of this writing, search engines Google and Yahoo! are able to index text compiled into a SWF, as well as any HTML code that is automatically generated by Flash. And although the SWF itself is not extremely searchable, any content inside a SWF can still be made very visible by using the right tactics. Note: Google indexes SWF files on the web. In Google, you can search specifically for SWF files by searching for filetype:swf + "search example", and the results will search page URLs and static text in SWFs. The problem with using this method for Flash SEO is that users are unlikely to perform a search for a particular file type to find your site. Further, the pages found in a Google search are links to actual SWF files, not HTML pages, so you have significantly less control over what the user will see even if they do end up finding your SWF. What about SWF metadata? In Flash, for a few versions now, you have been able to add metadata information like a title and description to your SWFs. This metadata gets embedded in your SWFs to make them potentially visible to search engines. Sadly, SEO in Flash isn't that easy, because search engines don't currently index this information. Related Referrence : Google learns to crawl Flash Improved Flash Indexing

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