Flash site listing on Google

NoahM · 04-11-2003, 02:50 AM

Ok, I did not have anything to do with building this site, but I was asked by a friend to look into why it was not showing up in any search engines. After about one minute I am just about positive it is due to the exclusive use of Flash and no meta tags.
The site is currently very simple and is going to be re-worked. In the mean time, does anyone have an answer as to what can be added to get it into search engines, or are meta tags the best and only route for now? Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

*squillo* · 04-11-2003, 03:24 AM

You might want to check out this thread which tangentially talks about this topic.

In any case, you only have to add your friend's site url with this form at Google for it to start appearing there. Same with altavista and other engines.

You can also use more than the meta tags -- just add all the text from the flash pages into the HTML if you wish. There are a number of ways to hide it in the source code without it being visible to users.

best
squillo

*Jeff* · 04-11-2003, 07:18 AM

I don't have much time to type this, but without looking at the site in question, one approach if you want to keep it all or mostly flash rather than html would be to concentrate on human-reviewed directories and recriprical links from other sites. The most important would be getting a listing with dmoz which would then result in google including it in search results as well with the title and description the DMOZ editor approves or gives it as a start (and google will spider from there providing there is some spiderable content for it.)

NoahM · 04-11-2003, 09:31 AM

Jeff- If I am following you, there is no spiderable content, assuming that Google still can't spider a flash file.
squillo - I had thought about that, but thought that since the site has been up for a couple of years that the problem was bigger than that. I have never registered my own site with Google, but it appears in searches. Oh well, I guess that is the mystery of Google.....
Thanks all for your help. If anyone else has experience dealing with a Flash site and Google, let me know.