Flash and SEO

[forum4malta]

We all know that search engines do not like Flash but what is your experience with deep flash linking?

Did anybody publish website done with deep flash linking and what was the effect on search engines.

thank you

Edit: Spam removed, user banned. Topic left in case anyone else has the same question, as the following post is useful.

[Medyman]

I use SWFAddress on almost all of my Flash websites and applications. It certainly doesn't hurt and adds 10x to the usability and accessibility of the site.

As far as SEO, having a greater amount of URLs available can actually cause detriment to your search engine results if there is no content on them (and as far as most search engines are concerned, flash isn't content). So, meta data and browser optimization are key.

What we do is always come up with a backup content for when flash isn't available. This means that we have a full HTML back up of any/all content we display via Flash (even if it's an entire site). That (fully standards compliant, validated) HTML back up is included in the markup. Then, we test with javascript to see if the user/browser can view/display Flash. If it can, we serve up the flash. If not, we serve up the HTML. SWFObject is a simple way to do this.

So, as far as SEO is concerned in those instances, it would be the same as a regular HTML page. We've achieved great success with these sets of techniques.

Hope that helps.