The search engines are slowly coming around to indexing the content of Flash files. There are ways of helping them find links hidden in Javascript as well.

The famous KISS-principle (keep it simple, stupid!) continues to be a sensible rule in search engine optimization: Stick to regular text with regular HTML-links and the search engine will be able to index your site.

Too many site owners have bought fancy and dynamic web designs, only to find that their search engine visibility is close to zero.

Why? Mainly because the search engine spiders have not been able to interpret and understand text hidden in Flash-files and partly because they have not been able to follow links buried in javascript.

Google is now indexing Flash-content

Google is now reading the text of Flash content. Google’s spiders will “click” on buttons and fill in forms in order to get access to content.

In June Ron Adler and Janis Stipins of Google said that

“We’ve improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash ‘gadgets’ such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between.”

They are also identifying URLs hidden in the Flash file and telling their spiders to follow them like any other link.


How to hide Flash content

Given that Google can read all the text hidden in the Flash file, you may also consider hiding some of it. Adler and Stipins puts it this way:

“If you prefer Google to ignore your less informative content, such as a ‘copyright’ or ‘loading’ message, consider replacing the text within an image, which will make it effectively invisible to us.”

It also makes sense to put important text near the top of the code, as Google often uses that text to identify what the file is about.

In order to find out whether your Flash-files have been indexed, do the following search on Google:

site:yourdoman.com filetype:swf

Google has made use of Adobe’s work on making Flash visible for the search engines.

Yahoo! is also working with Adobe to improve Flash indexing.

A long way

Historically speaking, it is strange that it has taken so long for Google and Yahoo! to get this far.

This especially applies to Yahoo! who became the owner of the AlltheWeb search engine when acquiring Overture. In 2002 we reported that Norwegian AlltheWeb was able to index Flash files!

Making javascript-links visible to the search engines

As regards javascript in general, the search engines still may ignore links buried in such code. There are ways around that hurdle however.

In the UK magazine webdesigner Adam Stafford recommends that you use “fail-safe scripting”, so that regular HTML link alternatives are available both to search engine spiders and those that have javascript switched off.

<a href=”alternative.html” onClick=”location.href=’javascript-dependant.htm’;return false;”>

He continues:

“Using return false in your onClick scripting tells the browser that you are handling the click with JavaScript, and thus the browser ignores the click event. If javascript is disabled or not supported, the onClick event isn’t read and the browser will react to the click by going to the href attribute as normal.”

Another good tip is too move as much of the javascript-code as possible into external JS files. Javascript code has a tendency of bury the real content of HTML-files and makes it harder for the search engines to find out what the page is about.

Improved Flash indexing (Google Webmastercentral Blog)
Google Can Now Index . . . Flash!, An Interview with Michael Marshall by Robin Nobles (Search Engine Workshops)