Google and Yahoo! are both turning their search engines on with the ability to search through Adobe’s Flash file content. Websites that are built with flash components or rich internet applications will now yield up their content to Google and Yahoo! for indexing and listing in SERP’s.
“End users will be getting more accurate search results because there’s a lot of information in SWF files that will now be fully indexed, including more information in Rich Internet Applications (RIAs),” said Justin Everett-Church, senior product manager for Adobe Flash Player, Platform BU.
“And content producers are now able to put Flash files online and know that they’re going to bring more users through organic search. The good thing is that they don’t have to do anything to enable this capability it works on any SWF file,” Everett-Church told Macworld. - NYTimes
Flash has historically been criticized for two primary reasons. The first reason is the over use of flash introduction pages that are used by advertisers covering everything from new cars, to consumer electronics to super models popping eca stack pills before getting air brushed within even thinner, longer images. Those intro pages are notoriously ignored and the ’skip intro’ button is one of the popularly pushed buttons on the internet.
However, there is a great deal of flash web content that looks similar to existing web pages, providing useful displays of text and video and navigational buttons that before now search engines literally turned a blind eye towards.
So now that the blind eye has been corrected for search engine vision, it will be interesting to see the shift in search engine results that will take place as Google and Yahoo! attempt to determine if the Flash is really important or whether or not it is a Flash in the pan deserving yet another intro skip.
I created a useful map for a political blog today. Now, this was a political blog, so I apologize for the droll topic in advance.
On this site I create a similar map sometime back documenting video download tools and video download programs for sites like YouTube. The map is actually a flash swf file created with SnagIt. The Snag image is from a MindManager Mind map, an I put the whole thing together and publish it with Windows Live Writer.
Almost all of it. I actually upload the swf file with an ftp program an then link to the file with the object embed tags in Windows Live Writer.
version=7,0,19,0"width="780"height="916"title="McCain Lobbyist Scandal History Politics,
Marriage and Affairs"><paramname="movie"value=
"http://www.nomoreincumbents.org/images/McCain-Lobbyist-History-Scandals.swf"/><paramname="quality"value="high"/><embedsrc="http://www.nomoreincumbents.org/images/McCain-Lobbyist-History-Scandals.swf"quality="high"pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="780"height="916"></embed></object>
The interesting aspect about using SnagIt here is that you can easily generate flash hover over images with text, hot spots, even images popping up from a map to convey images an information in a richer way than is possible with a static image. This extra rich and easy to create media is kind of like a portable cell phone booster for websites and blogs. The functionality takes just a minute or two to create, but makes a site more functional, more sticky, and more rich and dense with useful information.
Here’s the actual map from that website, notice when you hover over some of the topics in the map different types of information and content becomes available or clickable.
Example Flash Map - image size squeeze down on this site
That image increases the functionality of a blog article. Again I compare it to a portable cell phone booster.
I blog on another site about the mobile phone industry and consumer electronics because I used to work for Motorola, and have been working to figure out the best way to cover these products as I research a company called Powerful Signal.
A booster can help get your message out when you are trying to communicate. Mind Maps have the power to do that as well in person, but its more difficult to convey that information and that message in a mindmap on the internet. This process seems to bridge that gap.
I would like to offer up an example of Good Flash Button implementation in web design. The site in my example is primeview.com. They are an arizona web design firm so you would hope that they know what they are doing.
Well, judging by their flash buttons alone, I suspect they do have a few good tricks up their sleeves. Check out this video below with an example of how their flash buttons engage and inform a visitor or reader. I found these to be pretty good, although I would give them an excellent if they had just a little bit of sound effects added in to give the buttons more texture.
Primeview also works in search engine optimization. That is very important for small to medium sized firms looking for web design solutions. Most small and medium sized companies need more than just web design or programming. They need a business solution and functioning web site. SEO helps a web site launch and operate in a way that is search friendly and on a good day brings in more business and leads.
They also offer a cool before and after gallery of images of websites that they have designed. You will probably notice if you view this flash element yourself, that their own website is more advanced in appearance and functionality than many of their client websites. This typically indicates to me that their clients have not bought into the concept of how the advanced features are evolving on the internet today or how they are being used. Sometimes, that is a smart decision for a client to make, but in this case I suspect that their clients missed out on an opportunity to have some very good work done for them.
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