David Utter from Webpronews.com writes about using Flash animation in websites.
As much as site publishers want to present the best possible presence to their visitors, they equally want to stay in the good graces of search engine spiders, and Google's in particular. It presents a challenge to webmasters: how to use Flash while showing the Googlebot what it needs to see? "The only hard and fast rule is to show Googlebot the exact same thing as your users. If you don't, your site risks appearing suspicious to our search algorithms," he warned. He offered three suggestions to webmasters. |
I learnt about the downside of using Flash quite by accident. I used to love using animation (especially Flash and Shockwave animation) in the websites that I managed. You can do so much with Flash than if you were just using plaing old HTML. Like many young webmasters, I got caught up in trying to give my websites that "WOW" factor by introducing Flash based intros and navigation. Then I started wondering why I wasn't getting any visitors. I then stumbled upon a thread in a forum where they were discussing the incorrect and over-use of flash. This then led me to more information about why Flash was NOT the best thing in the world to use in your website if you're serious about getting Search Engines Spiders to visit you.
In any case, I conducted an experiment. I created an exact copy of the site in question, but this time, I used pure HTML. I thought it looked quite lifeless without Flash but I figured it was just an experiment. The results were amazing. With the Flash site, the spiders were visiting me infrequently and only 3 of my 20 pages were indexed after 4 months. After only 40 hours of replacing my Flash site with the HTML site, major spidering activity was taking place and 16 of my pages were visited.
I don't use Flash anymore. Not because I don't like it but because I find it easier to maintain my sites without it. I can also respond faster and make changes quicker if I didn't have to fumble with Flash. In the long run, I figure visitors are going to return for my content, not because I've got snazzy Flash animations running.
If your site is heavy on Flash, you might be interested in the following links that discuss why Flash can be bad :
http://www.pass-the-time.com Good Review but I found a great strategy game at pass the time
Once they find it they will reward your site with top rankings and improved positions within the search engine results pages. In the Entire Course of this technique it will be referred to as simply søkemotoroptimalisering (search engine optimization).