can Google read swf files that and any scipt actions they might have such as "goto URL" etc
Im thinking of a redirect.

Can anyone say if this would maybe work or not.

Thanks in advance.

I cant say for sure, I actually had this pop into my head this morning so I did look into it on my own.

Google's "secret sauce" for swf's seems to be a bot like creature that just clicks around and explores normal swf files, and from what they say it can recover text from it.

They also say googlebot can't read swf files loaded with certain types of javascript....


Hope that answers your question

i think not. google spider maybe didnt have some business with swf files anyway

Yes google can detect redirects in flash.
They can also detect external sources.

Hmmm... I didn't think google could read flash. People are always saying SEOing a flash based site is difficult because of this.

Originally Posted by xxf8xx

Hmmm... I didn't think google could read flash. People are always saying SEOing a flash based site is difficult because of this.

It's still a bit glitchy but they can read it. Seoing in pure flash might give you some issues.
But you can just use a htmlwrapper, which means the source code will pure html.
And then flash will add the styling. Kind of like css.
Your seo won't be affected as the search engines can just read the source code and the hrefs etc as normal.

Thanks,
Im gona try loading a flash movie into an html doc as primary flash movie then have that primary flash movie load multiple movies in on toip of it. The final flash movie loaded will contain a small bit of actionscript to "GET URL" which will be my re-direct.

I dont think the G bot will be able to read theis.

Will keep you posted on results.

Originally Posted by xxf8xx

Hmmm... I didn't think google could read flash. People are always saying SEOing a flash based site is difficult because of this.

True, but remember that bots can detect what page they are on. So if they are on one page, then get redirected to page two without doing anything, then obviously they'll notice it.

i've had bots index all my code in flash including actionscript. It's definitely buggy but it can read alot more than we think.

Hmm, interesting sunseven!
So how do you know google bot indexed the actual actionscript?
How indepth was your script? Was it just simple scripts on buttons or was it more user input/interactive stuff?

Im Thinking of producing a swf that waits for 10 secs or so then "gets URL" of another page therefore re-directing the user to antohter page/site.

Hopefully when the google bot crawls the site it will be in/out of site before re-direct kicks in.

Whats dyou think?

I think google reads the swf and mimics its action / copies it...but to your original question, I say yes.

explore it a litle

i know google bot now reads flash too

Now how can we hidden our redirect code?

I think it's hard to hide redirect code since google bot become smarter, now they already can execute some javascript code and flash. Maybe the simple solution is popup or kinda javascript onclick to push visitor to go to your real site.