Hello Bobby - Thank you so much for such a thorough and well-thought-out response! I was not aware that Google indexed both the (X)HTML and the Flash -- that definitely changes everything.
Also, I definitely take to heart your two main points: 1) SWFObject is a best practice web authoring technique for embedding SWF content and NOT an SEO optimization tool. 2) Web authoring in general should be faithful to semantics (NOT to trickery, abusing code/technologies, etc.) I couldn't agree more with both! My only issue is this: Since Flash has very little in the way of standardized descriptive qualities, hierarchies, and semantics for search engines, it seems like the burden falls upon us Flash developers to provide descriptions, hierarchies, and semantic contexts that Googlebot can understand. At this point, it seems to me like the only way to do THAT is to provide a search-engine-friendly "index", "site map", or "mirror" of the Flash content. It seems to me like a totally valid use of SWFObject is to provide a mirror of the Flash content to users who can't correctly interpret Flash. Since Googlebot at this point doesn't correctly interpret Flash (and this is not a criticism of Google -- I can't imagine the challenges they face in trying to index content that has little to no visible structure for them), and if one thinks of Googlebot as a "user", is it an abuse of SWFObject to serve content to Googlebot that it CAN correctly interpret? This line of thinking leads me back to the thought: maybe there should be a way to force SWFObject to serve (X)HTML content to Googlebot. I totally subscribe to the belief that our duty as web developers is to serve content that is accurate (NOT deceiving) both structurally and semantically. I firmly believe that one should provide content that degrades accurately according to viewer capabilities, so that anyone who interacts with your website will receive the same content, whenever possible. Alternative content MUST match regular content, or you're being deceitful. It just seems to me like Googlebot is using an inadequate browser and should be served alternative content. I look forward to the day when that's not the case, but it seems like it is our current situation. What are your thoughts? Thanks so much! --eric --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SWFObject" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/swfobject?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
