I will chime in on this as well, but from a different perspective. IMHO this can't be complete weighted on the shoulders of Adobe. HTML has been around for a long time, and the need to search and catalog HTML has risen with the growing usage of HTML. In turn, companies like Yahoo and Google were born to accommodate our growing search needs. Their solutions have matured, but it didn't happen overnight. The problem with search engines and Flash content is, there hasn't really been a huge need to index Flash content, because let's face it, Flash was only really used for ads and marketing sites targeted at a focused product (I.E. movie sites, games, things like that). Sites we could easily add metadata to the HTML wrapper and get the users to our site. Since the introduction of Flex, flash has really gotten some maturity and the more and more developers are taking it seriously. We have "assimilated" ;) quite a few hard core java / HTML / MS programmers as of late. With Flex 2, this trend is only increasing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there has been a time in the web history that RIAs have gotten this much attention, or been taken this seriously. Things are really starting to happen in the RIA world and it feels like this is just the beginning. I think we are seeing the same problems that were faced when HTML first came around. SOE will continue to be a problem until the usage of Flash / Flex RIAs increase to a number where the Googles and the Yahoos start seeing this as a market they need to get into. On the other hand, this seems like it should be something Adobe should be pursuing more aggressively with the search companies (for all I know, they may already be doing this). To wrap up my thoughts, Flash is radically different from HTML and because of that, retrofitting Flash to mimic HTML for SEO may not be an efficient design. The current way we search HTML was designed in tandem with HTML, Flash may need a different approach, one that Adobe may not be able to provide alone. SEO in HTML is somewhat effortless and hopefully the future for us Flashers will be the same :-)
P.S. I haven't kept up with this from the AJAX / WPFE techs, but I imagine they will have these issues as well, the fact that Flash is a binary format that will make things much more challenging for us though. I do think we will start to see more solutions that are born with the RIA revolution. Dustin Mercer ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of dougmccune Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 1:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [flexcoders] Re: SEO Compatibility I just wanted to pipe up with my opinion on this matter, because it comes up a lot and the answers are always similar. And I get a little frustrated because it seems like Adobe tries to say this isn't a problem when it really is. To reiterate this scenario: Someone asks "Why isn't Flex content searchable by Google? Or how can I make it searchable by Google?" and then someone invariably responds "Of course you can get your Flex (or Flash) stuff indexed by Google! Google indexes SWFs and also here's a bunch of roundabout ways to add textual content into the HTML wrapper, etc, etc." While I know Adobe employees don't like to admit this, the answer is very simple: It is often impossible, and if not impossible then at least extremely difficult, to get your Flex content indexed by search engines. That's the straight answer. No more no less. If I make a dynamic app using ASP, PHP, Coldfusion, or whatever that outputs HTML, Google will index all the dynamic content because it follows query-string links (or if you use mod_rewrite or whatever). So if I have a full message board written like this then Google will index all the content. The only way to get the same thing to happen with a Flex app is to develop an alternative, non-Flex interface to output the message board contents. Basically you have to make a PHP or ASP version of your app as well as the Flex version. I find any attempt by Adobe to pretend like this isn't a huge problem very frustrating. EBay, Amazon, MySpace, YouTube, digg, you name any large website and you can be guaranteed that they will not be using Flex for the Web frontend for customers. They might use it for tons of internal business apps (ebay) or for something that can remain completely unindexed by Google (Yahoo Maps) or for media content (YouTube), but they will never use Flex or Flash (as it currently is) for the real frontend user interfaces. Sorry for going on a bit of a rant. But just once I'd like to see an answer from an Adobe employee saying "Yup, this is a real problem. What you really want to do, for all practical purposes, is nearly impossible with Flex. We're trying to work on it but for now you're SOL." Because that's the real answer. --- In [email protected] <mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com> , John Dowdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > sanjaypmg wrote: > > Is Flex SEO Compatible? > > If yes, How can I my flex application SEC compatible? so that it can > > be easily available for search engines available. > > Work in Adobe Flex produces SWF files. Text within SWF files can be > found and used by the search engines (contrary to widespread myth). Example: > http://www.google.com/search?q=%22contrary+evidence%22+filetype%3Aswf <http://www.google.com/search?q=%22contrary+evidence%22+filetype%3Aswf> > > If your content includes material fed in via database, then the search > engine would not usually see that you use those words. > > As with all SEO tasks, you'd first figure what search terms you have a > chance to compete on (eg, you will never appear on the first page of > results for search terms like "buy flowers online"). Then set up your > HTML hosting page with TITLE, URL, metadata and reinforcement of the > targeted text terms. Then make sure you get plenty of inbound links from > authoritative sources, preferably with your targeted search terms as > anchor text. > > jd > > > > > > > > -- > John Dowdell . Adobe Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA > Weblog: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd <http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd> > Aggregator: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna <http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna> > Technotes: http://www.macromedia.com/support/ <http://www.macromedia.com/support/> > Spam killed my private email -- public record is best, thanks. >
