Flash templates and SEO?

I don't know if this is still an issue but do Google's robots etc have a hard time grading a flash site?

Thx

Yes, it is still...........I guess they don't want to improve themselves in that feild.......poor guys

While I love flash and use it often. I usually don't go for an all flash site exactly for the reasons you mention. Now I do embed some flash for menus, so fancy effects etc. Of course you meta tags even with flash, but yes they still have problem. If you are going to go with it, then beef up your mini-nets, SBing, etc. to make up the difference.

Google can read certain parts of Flash, but it's not great at the moment - though better than it used to be. Google and Adobe have been working together to create a more "indexable" Flash but for SEO purposes it still lags behind HTML.

On a greyhat side, I wonder if during the transition period, Google would have problems distinguishing between real text used in the Flash and "stuffing" text used that's not actually linked anywhere.

Cheers,
Niggles

if you insist on using flash or creating a flash site at least use swfobject to embed it into your site, it at least allows for some optimization as it extracts text from in between specifc div tags to be displayed in the flash movie, whilst google has a hard time reading flash, it will normally bypass the javascript thats used to embed flash but read the content of the div tags that can be displayed in the flash movie...

do a search for swfobject by deconcept and read up on it - it will make more sense what i am talking about, the code is hosted at code.google.com and was part of the workshops at last years google summer of code

hth

thanks ukescuba

It is an issue, I have a full flash site right now and I'm working on a flash menu site at this moment so I can get the best of both world.

Try and avoid full flash sites, but if you must you can detect flash enabled browsers and serve an alternate HTML version so long as it's not substantially different content. This has the bonus of making your site accessible to humans with non-flash enabled browsers as well.

If you just do flash menus, replicate them as plain text versions down in the footer.

look at flashcms too - i believe that spits out an alternate html page... kinda based on the principles i was talking about with swfobject

overall, Google has issues with flash, and even though the newest version does have some accommodations for SEO, I would personally avoid Flash if you are seeking organic results. Something of interest, Bruce Clay, who is wildly considered one of the top SEO's online, uses flash in his navigation so that the search engines will NOT see his overall global navigation. He uses flash as part of his silo strategy, and keeps the links flowing to the subsections of his site very clean, using anchor text only. Hope that helps.