My take away from the last thread on this was that SEO is really a separate part of a webapp from the Flex/Flash/Ajax front end.
The way I've been thinking about it is that pages that get indexed by the search engine, should have the content that is indexed in a clean html container. These pages are kind of like a view of the data in the database, and would not automatically forward you into the app (avoiding the "cloaking" problem). These pages would have prominent links into the appropriate places in the main Flex/Flash/Ajax application. In this way, search engine indexed pages each become a kind of gateway into your app. Deeplinking is useful for that model of SEO, but I see the problems of SEO and deeplinking (and backbutton management) as two different problems, though one helps the other. Deeplinking has a lot to do with user experience too. I can't tell you how much I hate it when I send a link to a friend, and they don't see what I see when they click it. Also, you forgot to mention unFocus.History (which now has Safari 1.2+ support!) ;-) http://www.unfocus.com/projects/source/ Thanks, Kevin N. Matt Chotin wrote: > Quick little poll for you guys (written late at night, not validated by > my bosses, please be gentle...). There has been plenty of discussion on > this list and elsewhere about deep linking and SEO for Flex apps. > Various solutions are available currently for deep linking like URLKit > or SWFAddress. However a robust solution for SEO is not available, > primarily because the search engine vendors need to cooperate a little > bit (the most popular suggestion these days is to return HTML instead of > a SWF when you think it's a search engine viewing your page, however > this is known as "cloaking" and the search engines frown upon it; think > about how porn sites operate and you'll know why). > > Deep linking on its own of course has benefits, better URL support in > the address bar for bookmarking, copying into an IM or email, and even > cleaner history management. But I would contend that most folks want > deep linking so that pages can show up in a search engine, that while > deep linking is nice, SEO is even more important. > > Q1: Do you think about deep linking primarily in the context of SEO, or > do you often want deep linking for non-search-related tasks? > > We are currently investigating adding deep linking support into the Flex > framework (similar perhaps to URLKit, but more integrated, design still > TBD). However I also want to get your opinion as to whether you think > we should be investing here at this time, knowing that we may not have > an SEO solution at the same time. Note that as I said, SEO also > requires search engine help, so this is not a straightforward tradeoff. > > Q2: Would you have us invest in deep linking before SEO, or is it of > more use to you if they come out together? Are current deep-linking > solutions sufficient for you at this time? > > Also note that this is a completely unscientific survey and that we > reserve the right to do whatever we please regardless of how you respond > :-P > > Thanks, > Matt >
