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July 08, 2008
Google now indexes Flash, but text remains best practice for SEO
By Kai Blum
Google announced last Monday: "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."
Does this mean that the use of Flash will not impact search engine rankings negatively anymore? No, because there's a difference between getting indexed and achieving a top rank on Google or Yahoo. PDFs are also indexed, but do they frequently come up as No. 1 in search results? Can they compete with highly optimized HTML-based pages? No.
Text sites will continue to beat Flash sites, in my opinion, because of the specific value the search algorithms assign to various HTML elements, especially tags that indicate headlines or emphasis. I doubt that Flash content will be assigned a higher value than regular text. Therefore, indexed Flash content will not improve a site's search engine rank significantly, especially if competition is strong and if competitors stay away from Flash and optimize their pages with the appropriate HTML tags.
Posted by Alicia Dorset at July 8, 2008 09:57 AM
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