Historically, much of the Flash-based content on the web has been unavailable in search results due to search engines inability to extract content, such as text and links, from Flash (SWF) files. This situation has been frustrating for web developers and artists alike who have tried to come up with workarounds to help get search engines to index and rank their Flash pages.

That seems to have changed as a recent post on the Google Webmaster blog says that Googlebot can now extract textual content and links so Google can better crawl, index, and rank the web site.

This is a significant change in direction as even Google’s own help documentation has warned against the use of Flash-only sites:

“In general, search engines are text based. This means that in order to be crawled and indexed, your content needs to be in text format. This doesn’t mean that you can’t include images, Flash files, videos, and other rich media content on your site; it just means that any content you embed in these files should also be available in text format or it won’t be accessible to search engines.”

Google had in the past suggested using Flash sparingly or using a method such as Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) to provide an HTML source that can be rendered as either Flash or non-Flash.

So now that both Yahoo! and Google can read Flash files, how much will this change impact search relevance? Neither Adobe nor Google could provide numbers about how many more pages Google will now be able to crawl and index and how much this has impacted search results.

So does this mean it’s finally OK to build my artist web site entirely with Flash?

I’d still discourage having an all Flash website…especially considering Flash content isn’t made up of primarily words. It’s made up of images, video, and animation, and none of that will be surfaced in search results with this advancement. Google’s new Flash algorithms extract text and links only, so everything else is still a black box.

Because of this, you are still missing out on seach engine optimization methods and limitations in building a rich Flash website:

• No Meta Data
• No capacity to distinguish text formatting (so no h1, no bold, or strong, or italics, no bullet points, none of it.)
• You have to create your flash file in a way that results in having a separate URL associated with every major piece of content in the Flash file.
• You can only have one page Title if the entire site is in Flash - thus it becomes extremely difficult to optimize and target to various parts of your 50 page site to their audience if the site is built entirely in Flash when you only have ONE page title.

It’s not that we don’t like Flash. Flash has the potential to showcase a product or service’s benefits in ways that static pictures and text can’t quite match. But if what you create is cool, but the content fails to attract attention, interest, build desire, and call your visitors to action, then you are wasting your time and their time; after all you are looking for leads, subscriptions, and sales, not just traffic.

In a recent test by FutureNow with one of their clients, they were able to reduce the homepage abandonment by 28.57% by substituting a flash element, with a static image. This change reduced load and wait time, it listed product benefits immediately, and the client  didn’t have to hope people would be patient enough to see the right part of the Flash animation. It also helped boost sales, since before the test so many people left before they got past the home page.

So what’s a good example usage of Flash on a website?

Take a look at this page from the  Leo Diamond website. It is not the prettiest web site out there, but the Flash tools provide visitors with a better feel for diamond carat size and color than either text or static pictures could and because of this, the site converts extremely well due to this interactive diamond tool.

So what things should I consider before deciding to use Flash on my web site?

• What will this allow me to convey that text and static images wouldn’t?
• Am I actually conveying benefits or just adding sparkle and glitz?
• Does it address the visitor’s true concerns?
• Is there a way to make this more interactive and not just a push-presentation?
• If I can’t make it interactive, what can I do to hook the viewer right from the start, so they don’t skip the presentation? (You ARE going to provide a “skip” option, right?)
• What pathways am I providing to the flash viewer when they are done with the interactive tool or presentation?
• Do your calls to action continue to build on this momentum?

If you can answer those questions, it might be smart to use Flash sparingly on your website - but remember to make sure you measure the impact on your bottom line first.