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Google Can Now Index . . . Flash! An Interview 
with Michael Marshall (Part 1)

By Robin Nobles

As you know, a Flash movie as the index page of a site has 
always been a major problem with search engine optimization. 
There's simply no content for the search engines to index.

So when I learned that Google can index the contents of
Macromedia Flash movies, I was astonished. It seemed this
remarkable discovery had gone virtually unnoticed in the SEO
community.

But as you probably know, Google has always been the first to
index different types of content: PDF files, .doc files, etc.
Google has also made amazing inroads in being able to index
dynamic content.

And now they're the first major search engine to index Flash -
another significant step forward in the SEO industry.

So why has Flash presented such problems in the past?

Background of Macromedia Flash Movies and SEO

With a Flash movie as the main page of a site, the Web site owner
is giving up the crucial text necessary to prove to the search
engines that the main page is about a particular topic. Without
that text, the search engines have nothing to index. Therefore,
the main page rarely does well in the rankings, unless off-page
factors such as link popularity or link reputation are sufficient
to carry the page on their own.

In the past, legitimate work arounds have been few and far
between. This made things extremely difficult for businesses that
wanted to create a rich user experience with a Flash home page,
such as Web design firms, photography studios, graphic design
firms, and so forth.

So, these businesses often sacrificed rankings for the user
experience, since they could rarely have both while still
following all of the guidelines set forth by the search engines.

Introducing . . . Michael Marshall

When I learned that Google is indexing Flash from Michael
Marshall, creator of ThemeMaster (http://www.theme-master.com)
and chat/forum moderator for our online search engine marketing
courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com), and when I learned of
the fascinating discoveries he'd made, I immediately wanted to
interview him for an article.

So let's take a look at what Michael has discovered about Google
and Flash.

Question:

Michael, how do we know that Google is now indexing the contents
of Flash files? Is there a way that we can search the index just
for Flash?

Michael Marshall:

Yes. You can enter your search term in Google, and along with
that search term, use the filetype operator and restrict your
search to the file extension ".swf".  This will search for your
search term only in Macromedia Flash files. You should see
[FLASH] just before each listing in the results page that is a
Flash document.

For example, put the following in the search box at Google:

"Best Free Banner Exchange Market" filetype:swf

Question:

How can we extract the text found in a Flash file to see what
Google sees?

Michael Marshall:

Macromedia has a Flash Search Engine SDK
(http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download/search_engine/) 
that will give us just what we need. The SDK (Software
Development Kit) includes an application named 'swf2html'.
Swf2html extracts text and links from a Macromedia Flash .SWF
file, and returns the data to stdout or as an HTML document.
Swf2html is provided as a compiled application and as a static
library for linked library implementation. For complete
functionality, see the file Readme.htm included in the SDK.

Question:

Do you have an example of a Flash file that we can see, as well
as an example of the text that the Macromedia tool extracted from
the Flash file?

Michael Marshall:

Yes. I have an example of each. If you look at the extracted
output in Web page form, you will see that it is not very pretty.
Nevertheless, you've got lots of SEO-worthy content there, and
that's what we are most concerned with. You should visit the
Flash presentation itself, mouse over the text, and click the
links in the presentation so you can be familiar with the Flash
presentation. You can compare where certain text appears in the
Flash presentation and where it is found in the extracted text.

Example of Flash file:

http://www.internet-marketing-analysts.com/flash_sample.html

Example of extracted text:

http://www.internet-marketing-analysts.com/extracted_text.html

(Note: This Flash example is based on one of Michael's own
products. However, I chose to use it for two reasons: 1) because
of the many different types of Flash involved; and, 2) because it
is a text-heavy Flash example, as opposed to many other examples
of Flash that I could have chosen to use.

Added Note: Be sure to highlight the entire page by clicking on
Ctrl A)

In the output file, you'll notice that some text seems to be
repeated on multiple lines and one portion of it even appears
invisible since the font color comes out white. This is just a
side effect of the conversion/extraction tool and is not really
invisible text and is not spamming in any manner.

In other words, you're doing nothing wrong when this happens -
it's simply due to the tool itself and not spamming or true
invisible text.

(Continued in Part 2. This is a two-part article.)

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Robin Nobles teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on search engine
marketing workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com) in
locations across the globe as well as online search engine
marketing courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com).
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