View Full Version : Flash
janet1110
2-7-02, 11:10 PM
I heard that sites with index pages with Flash on them aren't recognized by search engines. Is this true?
alphadesk
2-8-02, 12:00 AM
Hello Janet,
I am not an expert in this, but if all you have is the flash file on your index page I don't believe the search engines can read any text from your page. When the search engine can't read any text they probably won't list that page and stop crawling your site. Of course there are many search engines and some may have made some kind of adjustment for flash pages. As flash becomes more and more popular they will have to address this somehow.
You may find some useful info at this site about search engines.
search engine watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com)
If possible do a combination of flash with other text and links and it may help with your problem.
esccanada
2-8-02, 04:39 AM
The search engines obviously can't grab any text if there isn't any but remember:
There's also Meta Tags that can be encoded in the <HEAD> portion of your HTML. Most search engines look at these as well.
This issue was addressed in another posting somewhere here...
"can't remember"... don't have time to search it down right now...
but basically in a nutshell.....
No... most search engines cannot index a FLASH page.... but if you submit.... other pages from your site.... it will pick up the flash page eventually...
normally... with a lot of seach engines.... you submit just your starting page... and the spider will follow all links from there...
but if it's a flash page.... unless you put you links at the bottom...
"with some engines that's a no no"..... the spider doens't know where to look... so it quits... most Spiders cannot read actionscripts embedded in the flash....
I would suggest.... submitting whatever page.... the intro page goes to .... to the search engines.... instead of the main page
Hope this helps
horsepill.com
2-11-02, 02:15 AM
As long as you have 'meta tags' in your 'head' section, you will be fine. This is what a lot of search engines look for. Also Flash can put in the text used in the Flash Movie, it might help keeping it in there. You can't lose with flash, I use it and swear by it.
SimCoWeb
2-13-02, 01:15 AM
Flash is a great add in item for creating banners, special text messages, etc. as opposed to GIF animations. Simply because it loads faster and is much more versatile and the creative abilities are far more reaching.
For those who don't have the bucks nor the time to learn Flash I suggest Swish as an alternative.
www.swishzone.com
Another thing I think the search engines will pick up on is text that is commented out. Right at the top of your BODY section, put something like this:
<!-- Some hype about my page, blah, blah, blah -->
Whatever you want to say. Key words and such. It won't show on your page, either.
(I think I forgot to do that on my current pages.)
Yeah, Swish 2 is pretty neat. I do wish it had an alignment panel like Flash, though, rather than just grid alignment.
Atomic-Design
3-10-02, 05:20 PM
Macromedia is going to release Flash MX soon! I can't wait! Anyways, Flash allows you to embed HTML in the Actionscript editor. I wonder if you could put META's in there. Regardless, Yahoo! won't find a .swf for you, it's not a webpage, it's just a file.
Some search engines may ignore the META TAGS. Therefore, Flash should be used as an accessory, not as a complete page.
Atomic-Design
3-12-02, 08:32 PM
Originally posted by SimCoWeb
Flash is a great add in item for creating banners, special text messages, etc. as opposed to GIF animations. Simply because it loads faster and is much more versatile and the creative abilities are far more reaching.
For those who don't have the bucks nor the time to learn Flash I suggest Swish as an alternative.
www.swishzone.com
Swish is great, and so is Coffeecup stuff. It's much less powerful, but quicker, and has some cool presets. http://www.coffeecup.com.
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