Flash and SEO

[Mark]

Is adding flash to website beneficial? Do you think it would affect site rankings in the search engines?

[James]

Flash intros can be good or bad, depending on how they're used but don't forget that whatever is in the flash element is worth zero to the search engine becuase very few search engine spiders understand Flash. Flash can be only good for the entertainment sites like music, movies etc. or the company site's selling an image rather than a product.

[kev woodman]

Adding Flash shouldn't hurt your ranking providing that you're not hiding a lot of content in it (although there are ways around this). Producing a whole site in Flash is a bit different and this would affect your ranking because spiders can't index the content.

The biggest problem with Flash is embedding it so you still get valid mark-up although as long as you publish with the accessibility features enabled you should at least pass those standards.

[Jan]

Yeah, flash hurt your website in search engine ranking cos search engines are not able to read content presented by Flash. They just treat Flash as an embedded object or graphics only.

[Peter]

Flash is definitely one of the best solutions for a site to make a big impression from a graphical point of view. But if the majority of your web site content exists within Flash elements then you are going to have a very hard time climbing your way to the top on the most important search engines.

[kev woodman]

If you're talking about adding elements of Flash to your site - banner ads, image gallery, maybe even navigation if you do it right - then you shouldn't have a problem. If you really want to produce the whole site in Flash then a) reconsider or b) do some research on how you can get around the search engine problems. There's some good stuff at clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3419561 but you might want to do a bit more reading.

I'd have to disagree with James and say that Flash intros are the work of the devil but if you absolutely must have one then at least put a 'skip intro' button on it.