Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog

There are many reasons why huge Flash files are evil:

• Those who view a Flash intro are usually not interested in seeing it every time they come to your site.
• Flash development is an expense that is rarely justified and is rarely focused on the needs of the site visitor. Some Flash developers also protect their Flash files to prevent others from editing them, which means that you may need to hire them to make changes or design a new site if the Flash file has errors.
• Search engines struggle to index, navigate, and classify flash. Flash typically offers little descriptive content, so even if engines could index it, most won't care to
• Flash files take a while to load meanwhile, the user may be hitting the back button (kiss, kiss, goodbye).
• Even if search engines can determine the content of Flash programs, most Flash designers place all the Flash in one program, which makes it hard for search engines to want to refer people to it.
• Some people use meta refreshes and other arbitrary Flash detection technologies that disable the browser back button. Google AdWords will not allow you to advertise sites that have the browser back button disabled.
• A Flash designer once disabled the back button on one of my client's websites. He wanted to charge her $4,000 to fix a problem caused by his own incompetent behavior. It took me ten minutes to fix it, and he no longer does design work for her.

If you do use Flash, try to keep your files small, embed the Flash files in HTML pages, and use <noembed>what the Flash represents</noembed> to write what the content in the Flash represents.

Flash also has an SDK, which can aid in search engine indexing, but it is usually recommended to avoid Flash.

SWFObject (http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/) is probably the best way to do XHTML valid Flash detection.

I am not a usability expert by any means. If you are interested in the topic, I recommend Jakob Nielsen's site or his books, or you can buy Kim Krause's inexpensive yet highly useful (and downloadable) usability checklist found at http://www.usabilityeffect.com/ringbell.html

Also, you might be very interested in the article wrote by Mark Berghausen, titled "Best uses of Flash" at the Google Webmaster Central Blog

Popularity: 6% [?]