Flash is platform that always is the first choice by the web designer for developing website better in terms of user interface, better design. It is the best platform provides by Abode Inc. We use ActionScript (Client-side coding) to implement flash into Action. Flash platform spread its root so deep that it is very difficult for the professional web designer to move on other Technologies. But no one is prefect in this World, Similarly in the case of flash, besides having So many features one main disadvantage of flash is that it is not recommended for SEO purpose.
Flash is NOT recommended for SEO Because:
- Text representation: Whatever the contents (Text, links) and elements (Videos, Animations) used in the Flash is stored in “.swf” file. So when Search engine is indexing such websites they index “.swf” file as Such they are not able distinguish between elements and contents. Now the main problem is if someone is using Keywords in Flash it is of no use.
- Loading time factor: Crawlers work very similar to web browsers, But at very high speed. But when crawlers go to flash enable websites. It takes lots of loading time and after crawler’s time up the most of Flash enable web pages left except crawling. The reason for more loading time is that flash contents are always buffered, It is not rendered. So buffering always require more time.
- No external links: Unlike HTML, external links are not possible using Flash. External links are more important to link web pages on one server to the web pages on the other server. So when robots or crawlers scan flash enable web pages. The scanning will be limited to only one web page not the entire website.
- Missing HTML tags: As we know h1, image alternate text and many more are very important HTML tags as search engine point of View. The markup language is fundamentally designed to handle text, and browsers are by nature built to quickly and accurately display HTML pages. But Flash doesn’t Support these tags.
Conclusion: Although, flash is not so good for SEO purpose, the features of flash can’t be ignored. It provides the high end user interface. If we talk from developer’s point of view, It is very difficult for them to migrate from flash Platform to other. There is lot of development ahead in flash platform. Lets hope we the search engines will find a way to understand and index flash content.