Flash and Search Engines

[dave_h]

Ok I am at a lost as to which forum to place this post so let me try it here and hopefully it's the right spot.

Question.

If I create a website using pure html and then add anywhere from one to a few pages of Flash but not for my home page, how will this affect my website as far as search engine rankings?

To clarify, my home page will be html as well as the other pages but in addition to that I want maybe a few flash pages, how will this affect my website as far as search engine rankings?

Another questions would be how would an html page be affected in a search engine ranking if it only has say one flash movie? How about 2 or three?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks
Dave

[Dave_A]

Hi Dave_H, from my angle a web site with flash graphics doesn't make much difference to the way my search engine indexes but I will add that some web site designers choose to try and stun us with an ability to try and hide any text inside index pages which makes it harder for some search engines to correctly get and pick up keywords. So it's question of just who are they designing web sites for? Them selves or search engines, search engines have the problem of content gathering and I must admit to dropping the web spidering, when a page takes more than couple of seconds to get indexed.
It's sort of +++++++++++++ Click click click and I switch off better to get into html types of web pages far easier for the robot to understand.

Regs

Dave A

[Harry]

Question #1 - The best mix is an HTML page with Flash included, as if it were an image.

Question #2 - The amount of Flash in a page has nothing to do with ranking, at least the last time I checked.

Sticky me and I'll give you a link of an article I wrote about this issue.

[whoisgregg]

The particular pages that have flash content will be mostly indexed as though the flash content wasn't there. Same as if you had a big block of javascript in the middle of your page, most search engines will look at once, try to see if it can glean any meaning, and generally at the end, just ignore it.

When embedding flash content into HTML pages, it's always a good idea to use regular HTML text to describe the movie (in the users terms).

[SeoPro2005]

Are you wanting to make a search engine using Macromedia flash? I was thinking of doing this for www.roboranking.com. I am almost complete and it will be posted soon.

I will be glad to show you the .fla file I used when my work is complete.

[dave_h]

Thanks for the overwhelming response folks! As far as making a search engine using Flash I sure will be interested.

Any other input welcome.

Thanks for now
Dave