Now that some engines have the ability to index Flash content and Macromedia’s SDK makes it possible for other engines to index a Flash file’s content, times have definitely changed. In the past, even a brief discussion about utilizing Flash technology was taboo for search engine marketers. Although there have been recent breakthroughs, the format still creates problems for search engines because the common elements for an HTML file are missing. In Google, the content of an HTML page’s title tag becomes the search engine’s results link. For a Flash file, the first words of the file’s content generate the content of the search engine result’s link, which can look particularly odd if it is a list of unrelated words. Seeing this kind of result, a user may have no idea of the subject/theme/content of your Flash file, and may choose not to access it. However there are alternatives that you can discuss with your search engine marketing vendor, and, if you’ve already made a business decision to utilize Flash, there are some tips and guidelines you should adhere to.
