Tue 1 Jul 2008
Google & Yahoo Indexing Flash Sites!
Posted by Bashar under Technology
There are probably several down sides to building a Flash site, out of which I can list those for now:
1- Download Size: Flash sites are normally larger, take longer time to load.
2- Invisible: Search engines can’t index Flash content, making it unsearchable and invisible, thus killing big amount of targeted traffic.
3- Permalinks: With Flash, you get a url to the main Flash page and have to browse from there. Perhaps there are work arounds for this, but normally, you cannot send a permalink or bookmark it.
4- Copy/Paste: Whether that’s good or bad for the publisher, I usually hate the fact I can’t copy any text. Turns out I was wrong (shows how intelligent I am in Flash). You can chose to make text selectable or not.
Bandwidth is getting faster and faster, so point #1 is becoming less of an issue. And now, with the new deal, Google & Yahoo are working closely with Adobe to make Flash sites indexable and visible from search engines, the biggest downside of invisibility is gone!. Somehow, they plan to do this “they’ll use web crawlers to play through all of a Flash website’s possible “states,” and make that content available through their search results”. And by doing that, Flash sites will become even much closer to normal HTML sites, only much richer.
Why are Google & Yahoo doing this?
1- Expansion: The amount of invisible web is very large, and Flash forms a big percentage of it. By doing so they will be adding much greater amount of content to their search results.
2- Silverlight: Thik about. Why Google & Yahoo together? Why now? Why Flash only? Microsoft have just broke Yahoo’s heart by not matching their requested price, and Google were there to hold them. From an enemy, Google all of a sudden became Yahoo’s best friend. I still remember the days Yahoo! were returning a message saying “Search using Yahoo!” if you search for the word Google. Now, they are both working closely on ad revenue sharing model, and want to send a knock out for Silverlight.
In their official blog, Google announced they have already launched a spider for indexing Flash sites, and you can soon expect to see Flash site results soon. Question is, where will the result link take me though. If it’s to the main Flash page and I have to browse my way through, it’s still annoying and users may not find eventually what they want and leave. I’m sure they’ll get to the permalink stage at the end somehow though.
I wonder if the future of the web is all Flash. Some people claimed AJAX as a temporarily shifting phase, and I am wondering if Flash is really going to dominate, and AJAX sites are gonna look like static HTML sites today. I personally hope dynamic XHTML sites will last, and don’t really see them going anytime soon. I persoanlly like them more, and I am much more better and comfortable building them than graphics Flash ones.
So what do you think? What do you prefer?
Popularity: 41% [?]
July 1st, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Ok, I’m waiting for this Technology for long times now we can develop grate web site.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Flash should be left for video and games. I would hate to use it as an interface for information. Plus it’s cpu intensive!
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 am
Shammoh: Yeah, you must be over the moon now :)
3baid: Well, newer versions are utilizing the hardware and video cards better I heard. I also hate to see it overtake our HTML life.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:30 am
Hilu!
How are you? long time no see!
I’m playing Assassin’s Creed right now and just wanted to tell you “WOW!!”
It’s a tremendous game! Such detail and wowness! but that was only the begining..for it became slightly repetitive! I have to kill 9 dudes in 3 cities and they all follow the same exact procedure! I gotta say after the 6th guy, I wanted some change!
July 4th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I’ll also be waiting for the development of this technology. I love flash sites. The thing I don’t like from flash is it takes huge time to load coz, I am a dial up user.
July 8th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Kaileena: Hi. Yeah, your blog hasn’t updated either for quite some time. Now that you tell me this, I can tell why.
Sadly yes. Assassin’s Creed does get repetitive, and I hope they will overcome this in the sequel. I guess they would. Ubisoft are known to act on customer feedback properly.
I have recently got all MGS 4 episdoes to play the whole story (newbie to MGS!). However it was taking so much time and I had to put it to rest for a while, I got so many things to do, some you may like as well.
We’ll see when I have time to get back to it ;/. I really have a long list of games to play. but I don’t want my resume to be full of scratched games only. I want to be more than just a consumer, if you know what I mean.
July 8th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Yup! I know exactly what you mean! After playing Assassin’s Creed for long hours I got a tad fed up with the dark atmosphere and rescueing the same exact people over and over again (even the same voices and sentences!) and climbing the same view points. So I decided against my better judgement to open another game to add a little contrast in my gaming life, and Eternal Sonata was the best candidate (BTW, I bought the XBox 360, playing AC and Eternal on it). I did feel pretty guilty to open a potentialy enjoyable game while playing a tremendous one! felt scratchy 3ala goltik.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:59 am
That is great but i dont think the will index the arabic in Flash . So we can’t search in arabic using flash . because even in pdf format we have problem with arabic . I’m trying converter from pdf to text in arabic there is no way . because adobe they are not supporting arabic in all their products .
July 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Kaileena: Despite how bored you may get, DONT STOP NOW I’d say :). The game has a sequel, and the ending lets you really looking forward. Games like this should be played one shot to live the game. I don’t still own an XBox, and don’t plan to so far. I dont have time for my current games. I feel shy to even say the number of boxed games I have!
Mahbob: PDF and Flash are completely different as far as I know. Adobe did acquire Flash, but how indexing will go, we have to see. And as of now, you can search Arabic PDF files on Google easily.
See sample here.