SEO for Flash - Google crawling experiment - part 2

To find out about new Adobe stuff I went to Adobe MAX 2008/2009 conference. I was especially interested in session about Flash and search engines and looked forward to finally learn about status of Google and Yahoo flash crawling implementation.
Unfortunately it turned out to be very disappointing especially after realizing that lecturer didn’t know some basic things. All in all whole session was pretty foggy and it looks that we will have to stick to our flash SEO experiment :)
Lets make summary what we’ve figured out till now:

  • How Google indexes text embedded in Adobe Flash?

    • Google indexed whole content pretty well. All static and dynamic fields were indexed in search results. Mr. Google executed ActionScript as it should be. We tried to trick him somehow but it was not successful :)

  • Does Google follow links embedded in Adobe Flash?

    • Google is following all links in Adobe Flash even those generated by ActionScript GetURL function.

  • Can Google index external content loaded in Adobe Flash?

    • Yes! We loaded XML using my_xml.load() function. Google indexed that XML but as separate file.

  • Can Google index imported swf files?

    • It looks that movies loaded by ActionScript can’t be followed and indexed :(

  • Can Google index Flash created with JavaScript Object?

    • I think that was part of official announce of Google/Adobe that Flash created with SWFObject will be crawled. Yes it works!

I hope this experiments makes Flash and SEO mystery little more clear.

Please, feel free to add comments and suggestions for new experiments because we need your brain :D

Tags: adobe flash, , google, , SEO, yahoo

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 11:17 am and is filed under Playground. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


6 Responses to “SEO for Flash - Google crawling experiment - part 2”

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  1. deviantz Says:

    I’m been searching SEO tactics for flash website, but this is! thanks for this! very useful article!

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  2. james Says:

    This is heartening. I’ve always stayed away from flash inspite of its elegance because I thought it has no value in terms of search engine friendliness. I guess it’s time to go back to my books and learn flash this time.

    Thanks for this information.

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  3. Custom term paper Says:

    those questions solved many of our doubts as well :) Thanx for sharing and taking such important topic which no one else talks about and remained unanswered.

    4. 1314
  4. SEO Malta Says:

    As far as I know BING still can’t index successfully flash websites, but if you think Google is enough, then you’re game :P

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  5. superior seo Says:

    this is a fabulous site, have been following your experiments for some time now with great interest. keep up the good work.

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  6. software development company Says:

    hi , i am going to work on flash site and this is really useful to me. as i bookmark your website for articles. I am thankful to you for quality articles. Hope i get more from you.