Comments on: Why I Don’t Care That Googlebot Can Crawl Flash

By: Will Google's Adoption of Open Standards Hurt Publishers? | A Media Circus

Will Google's Adoption of Open Standards Hurt Publishers? | A Media Circus — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:46:27 +0000

[...] tags for the most important information on a page (well, people should be doing this, but often fail to–this is not good). By adding a “meta-layer” of information, or structuring the data, search engines can [...]

By: adam

adam — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:46:32 +0000

Carl

Thanks for the comment!

Indeed you can use them in harmony. I was being intentionally provocative with this post in reaction to all of the buzz around something that I feel is just not that buzz worthy.

You are of course correct when you say,

“I think it is the responsibility of designers and developers to educate the client and let them know there are “right” and “wrong” ways to do things and that they can have a robust visual and interactive experience while still being optimized for search.”

but the fact is, most designers simply don’t do that

By: Carl Sorvino

Carl Sorvino — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:21:26 +0000

Adam,
Why can’t you use Flash and SEO in harmony? No one said you have to build an entire site in Flash and there are technologies that allow Flash a deep link.

I think it is the responsibility of designers and developers to educate the client and let them know there are “right” and “wrong” ways to do things and that they can have a robust visual and interactive experience while still being optimized for search.

I have seen many a homepage (amex.com, coach.com) go from all Flash to AJAX and then back to a combo CSS/Flash site and I think this is the way to go to provide the best of all worlds.

By: adam

adam — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:18:52 +0000

Michael

I do agree that publishers have a right to choose, but I don’t think Google was not crawling flash to be difficult (as they have been trying for a long time now).

My feeling is that they web is about interactivity- not just on site, but with the rest of the web. If a publisher wants to treat their space online as a walled garden, well for be it from me to stop them. The problem will arise for that publisher or brand, not me.

I guess my feelings of frustration come from the fact that now I am going to have more and more clients (or potential clients) wanting to work in a way that will make it so my team has to create band aids on monuments, instead of solid foundations.

By: Michael Cohn

Michael Cohn — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:15:13 +0000

Can’t relate. Like it or not, many websites are in flash, and the fact that Google couldn’t see them without special measures being taken was obnoxious, both for the publishers and for users trying to find the sites by search.

Like any tool, flash can be abused. But every publisher has the right to present their content however they want. And this isn’t necessarily a step away from open standards. We’ll see whether Google makes a similar arrangement with Microsoft for Silverlight. If they do (and maybe even if they don’t), it’s just a matter of time before Google simply lays out a way for everyone to do this.