Attractive Flash Web Sites

The question is often raised during meetings with managers and business top dogs: Is it alright to have a flash animated web site? How do we use Adobe Flash properly to build a web site?

Flash is a software for creating graphic-based animation that can help a website become richer and more interactive. Flash is a great tool for creating online training modules, product demonstrations and other types of contents that require interaction. However, one major drawback of Flash is that search engines, including Google, cannot understand the contents of the website if it is all written using Flash. As a result, the search engine’s ranking of such a website would be greatly affected.

What is the meaning of ‘index’? When you can left-click the text on a web site and see it highlighted in blue after dragging over it, the content is classified as ‘indexable’. This is to say that the highlighted text and images or graphics of the site are located in various ‘layers’. Only then can the text-based content be indexed by search engines, such as Google.

So, what exactly is Indexing? It is the process that Google uses to scan the important details of a website. Google would then store the details in their database for Google users to search websites by keywords. If you create the entire website using Flash only, the text on your web page would be layered into the graphics and Google would then not be able to index your website.

In the old days, it is completely impossible for Google to index content written using Flash. Although there are news saying that Google and Adobe are working towards the goal of making content written using Flash more indexable, there are no test results on whether the attempt is successful or not. Therefore, it is of your best interest to incorporate text-based content in your website and avoid using Flash to create your entire web page.

Even though most people cannot resist the attractive appearance and the usefulness of Flash websites, these websites post a needless obstruction to Google as Google mainly seeks for text-based content.

Some websites may have two versions for users – “HTML Site” and “Flash Web Site”. It can solve the problem of Google indexing but it also leads to another problem. With two versions, the web owner needs to govern two different websites and this creates excess burdens on the owner.

Flash has its own merits, but unfortunately also its downsides. What we are suggesting here is that you integrate Flash components into an HTML site. In this way, you will still be able to benefit from the interactivity and attractiveness of Flash, as well as letting Google index the text-based contents and put you in a higher rank under their search results. People who visit your site will not miss out on the stunning design. Visitors will continue to increase since your site is now indexable. Would that not be the best way to resolve all the complications?