Flash and search engines
You may have caught the news that Adobe has released technology to Google and Yahoo that supposedly translates the text and links in any Flash file into something the search engines can work with. Taken at face value, that’s good news for any site that uses Flash.
But as this great post by Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch points out, being found is only a small piece of the puzzle. How high you rank is a lot more important. If you are item number 192 million in a search for “healthcare,” congratulations, you’ve been “found.” But that’s worthless. Frankly, if you aren’t in the first three pages, being “found” is virtually worthless. And if you aren’t on the first page, you’re missing the vast majority of potential traffic.
We’ve been testing a couple of client sites that use significant elements of Flash on their homepage, and so far, the search engines don’t appear to be finding them. But it’s probably just too early. We’ll keep monitoring and will let you know if we see any changes.
All that said, it’s a start. Most healthcare sites we see that use Flash don’t use it exclusively. So as long as the pages that contain a Flash file also have good, solid content, it shouldn’t matter.
Even if the Flash file can be found by the search engines, we continue to recommend that Flash, and technologies like it, be used appropriately, and not excessively. If a nice piece of Flash will better engage, inform and draw in your intended audience, then use it. But it shouldn’t be the whole page, or the whole site.
Most audiences are on your site to accomplish a specific task or obtain a piece of information. If Flash doesn’t help them do that, it’s just in the way. Even if it can be found by search engines.