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January 08, 2008
Google, SWF SDK
Google, SWF SDK: I saw this item in news searches earlier today, but now it has gotten linked on Techmeme, so conversation may escalate. The gist is that Google staffer Matt Cutts said in an interview that he "thinks" Google may have moved from their own method of seeing the static text in a SWF to the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK. We've known for decades that Google does in fact index results on the text in a SWF -- well, I exaggerate on the "decades", but it has felt like decades trying to get the SEO consultants to research before speaking. But it likely doesn't make much difference either way -- if your SWF happens to mention "rutabaga" within it, you still likely will not come up on that valuable first page of results for the query "rutabaga". You've got to figure out how your audience will likely try to find your service, and then optimize your HTML, metadata, and inbound links for those terms searchers will use on which you can competitively place. Even if Matt had solid info either way, it's hard to see how it would matter much. Figure out how your audience will be searching for you, estimate on which terms you can realistically compete, and then optimize for those particular queries. The only reasons I can imagine to download the old Macromedia SDK would be to check out the order in which your SWF's bodytext appears, or if you're making a SWF utilities of your own. Incidental bodytext might be useful in some advanced and specific searches, but not for making your site popular... Wikipedia and the defunct Rutabaga News will always outplace you.
Posted by JohnDowdell at January 8, 2008 01:04 PM
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Comments
John, Good to know you are still there at macromedia-adobe - I remember you from my days at mFactory.
About search - there is only so much eve a static decompress and analysis can get. So much of what folks do with flash relies on dynamic, user generated text. Unless Google runs the flash app and gropes the object tree, they won't have enough information to see what exactly is being shown and it's context. For comparison, Google et al do a decent job of scanning dynamic text from blogs.
We're (where I work that is) going to have to address this some time... but not today.
Posted by: MobiusKlein at January 8, 2008 03:17 PM
I was amazed that this seems to be "news" this days
saw on beedigital about this post, completly true, Flash developers should do everything to be SEO ready, swf is not enough, just like 007 ;)
Posted by: MrSteel at January 25, 2008 11:23 AM