First a quick primer on Flash and search engines. Search engines can’t read Flash files. So if you have a web site that is 100% Flash, the search engines will index your site…but they will think your site has zero content. Or in other words, Flash is “invisible” to search engines…and to them, your Flash site just looks like a blank page.
Keep in mind that search engines rank sites based on link popularity, so a site done 100% in Flash can still get top ranking…but that’s a whole different story.
Anyway, the latest news is that Adobe and Google have teamed up…and now Google is going to start indexing Flash content (actually they’ve been doing it for a couple years…now they’re going to start doing it better). What that means is, they are actually going to start “reading” the words inside Flash videos.
Cool. So now you can put together marketing videos for your product or service, Google will be able to tell what you’re saying in your videos and your site will get decent rankings for certain keywords, right?
Not exactly.
Let me explain. Google will only be indexing text found in SWF files (not FLV files)…and the text will have to be created in a Flash authoring tool like Flash Professional/CS3.
Sound confusing? Well, here’s an example. Let’s say you shoot a video of yourself talking at your desk. Then you edit everything with video editing software and add some text to your video. Google will not be able to index anything in your video.
On the other hand, if your video was edited in Flash Professional/CS3 and you added text there, Google will be able to index your text (pictures and live video clips cannot be indexed though).
So what happens if you’re not using Flash Professional/CS3 to make your videos…and instead you’re using traditional video editing software like Sony Vegas or Final Cut to make your movies? Well, nothing. Your Flash files are going to be invisible, more or less, to the search engines. Just like they’ve always been.
So the news of Google indexing Flash files is actually “non-news” (if that’s a word) for those of us who make videos outside of a Flash authoring tool. We’ll have to continue relying on traditional search engine optimization techniques to have our sites rank well in the search engines.
Want to know more about how Google will handle Flash files? You can read about it here in Google’s announcement.