Hey Bobby and thanks for pointing out this thread TheCosmonaut. Thanks for checking out my post as well....
> It indexes both your HTML > and Flash content, and makes a decision which content it will show to > a certain visitor as a search result. As mentioned in my research, Google isn't attributing content in Flash with the parent URL or as a single entity. This is still true as you can see using Google's own example query: http://www.google.com/search?q=nasa+deep+impact+animation&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS278US278 In the results, notice www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/deep-impact/index-flash.html doesn't include "alternative" content and that www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/deep-impact/index.swf is also indexed. When swf files are indexed they are accessible to users with or without Flash. Try the same query on your iPhone and you'll see what I mean. When users without Flash click on swf files in search results no progressive enhancement takes place and graceful degredation can't happen. > if you only show a Flash video with no textual content Googlebot will > probably index nothing, however if you provide descriptive alternative > content will it show these results instead? Actually the opposite seems to be true in most cases I've seen. My case study and Google's example is a Flash file at a parent URL without descriptive alternative text content or any text content in (X)HTML indexed in search results. In fact text content in Flash has been associated with the (X)HTML file. >Also does the type of user > agent that makes a search request influence the process? E.g. Google > would ideally only like to show search results based on what someone > with particular a user agent can see, so a text browser should render > different results than Firefox with Flash installed, and in case of > dynamic publishing with JavaScript enabled. I'm not sure how user-agent Googlebot would know what a user using user-agent Firefox sees. I'd be careful here because returning different pages based on user agent could be considered cloaking by user agent. If Googlebot has JavaScript enabled and SWFObject works as designed, I'm not sure how Googlebot would see text in (X)HTML. Can anyone explain how this would happen? >But you can already see > the complexity here, how does Google know that you have the required > version of Flash Player installed or JavaScript enabled? And what > about the difference between static and dynamic publishing? Brian > Ussery gives some good new insight in how Google deals with web > content today, however his first conclusion is certainly not that > conclusive at all. There is a lot more research that needs to be done > to describe Google's internal logic. There is lots of research to be done, that is for sure! I didn't go into lots of detail because as you point out, things can change at any moment but here is some of what is known today. Google is using Adobe's "Icabod" Flash player which like it's namesake is headless. In other words, #anchors no longer work against Googlebot seeing text content in Flash. Googlebot supports SWFObject and as a result may not currently see alternative text content in underlying (X)HTML. Obviously the point of SWFObject is to return Flash to users with Flash and user-agents supporting JavaScript, like the "new" Googlebot. Bobby mentioned H1 abuse (spam) by some Flash sites and I've seen a decline in Flash rankings for sites using this technique to manipulate rankings. This would also indicate Googlebot may no longer "see" H1s since SWFObject support was introduced in July. As far as dynamic content via xml, Googlebot now sees text content in "the Flash file" but, not dynamic content imported into the Flash file from another source. My theory is that Icabod may not yet support text content from another source. When it comes to meta data, links and other signals used by search engines these can be optimized even in Flash by using simple steps like avoiding "seamless transitions" in text rich sections of a site. I hope this helps shed light on my research and welcome any feedback or questions... -Brian --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
