How much effect does having a flash image on your page make?

[xenon]

What is the situation with having a flash image on my home page? Is it preferable to have text before using the flash image? Or is it in fact better to use no flash? I know that spiders don't like flash but wondered if it really made a difference if you only had a flash picture rather than a Jpeg image.

Does the position of flash actually matter mutch on the page?

[Dji-man]

I don't think have a flash image makes any difference. But make sure that it's not the only thing on your page and that you have real content and html code with your image it.

[xenon]

Hi, yeah you are right, it is just a flash image, not an entire website made out of flash. I have heard that you can make entire websites out of flash.

[tomh]

spiders ignore the flash mostly and just parse the readable text

[rizla]

I found this article useful:

http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20040927GettingFlashSitesRankedinSearchEngines.html

[xenon]

Big Thanks!! to Rizla, Tomh and Dji I'l read the article.

[xenon]

Ok this ones for all you newbies who also come here to learn: The conclusion of this thread and my research show that there are two types of website you can make.

1. A normal HTML website with an HTML file document structure. Apparantly if you have only a "flash file" embedded in the HTML document then it does nto matter as long as you have readable text and I am assuming that this will be treated no differently than an ordinary GIF or JPEG.

The other format is called a FLASH FORMAT file or WEBSITE and this is what can cause you problems because this style of file has only one entrance point, and this causes problems for the search engines and they avoid it like the plauge.

So in summary: Complete flash pages or sites are a big no no for the search engines.

Flash embedded in HTML files are fine.

Please correct me anybody :) If I'm wrong.

[creative666]

What will be in the Flash movie? Is it going to be used to represent any text at all or any links, if so a search engine will not be able to index the content.

Alltheweb were able to index some portions of Flash at one point, but now their technology has been folded into Yahoo! so we can only hope that they are going to continue along similar lines.

[jlknauff]

It's treated no differently than an image if used as part of your page. You run into problems when your whole site is in flash though. A good example of using it properly is www.seo-guy.com. The top of the page is a flash file. If you use absolute positioning you can have the non-text items appear where you want them, but show up last in your code so that the spiders find what they're looking for quickly.

[creative666]

True jlknauff, it is treated no different to an image file. But to have text in a flash movie or navigation menu in a flash menu then it is not search engine friendly.

It looks good on seoguy, and is done in a search engine friendly way - all of the links are backed up around the home page with text links.

[jlknauff]

Yes, most people should avoid flash menus at all costs, but their are workarounds to it (which I'll be writing on article on soon) I almost hesitate to say this, but SEs are begining to be able to read the text in Flash files. For those of you that like to use Flash-don't get your hopes up too high, it still has a long was to go.

[jlknauff]

[QUOTE=creative666]True jlknauff, it is treated no different to an image file. But to have text in a flash movie or navigation menu in a flash menu then it is not search engine friendly.

It looks good on seoguy, and is done in a search engine friendly way - all of the links are backed up around the home page with text links.[/QUOTE]
I forgot that he had nav in flash-here is another example www.vsssleep.com

[xenon]

[QUOTE=jlknauff]It's treated no differently than an image if used as part of your page. You run into problems when your whole site is in flash though. A good example of using it properly is www.seo-guy.com. The top of the page is a flash file. If you use absolute positioning you can have the non-text items appear where you want them, but show up last in your code so that the spiders find what they're looking for quickly.[/QUOTE]

I dooo not believeee I didn't think of that as an example? I actually looked at the source code for a few hints , but completely overlooked the flash!!! It sais it all!