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This looks like a PR bottleneck to me, but
(a)what's causing it?
and(b)what's the best way of unblocking it?
The homepage has a flash intro which then refreshes to a standard homepage. My gut feeling is that the flash intro is behind the PR problem. Of course I hate the flash intro but we're stuck with it (client loves it).
I made sure all the navigation links were included on the homepage, so Google should be able to get to the internal pages okay, and they're being indexed fine. But they're stuck on PR1, and I'm sure that's hurting the rankings.
How do I get the PR5 to flow freely to the internal pages. Some of the internal pages also have inbounds from external sites, so that should help, but clearly it's not enough.
The flash intro page has no text, other than the navigation links. Is this the problem? Do you need a minimum amount of text and if so what's the minimum?
Any opinions appreciated.
There must be good and bad ways of using flash, and that's what I need to get to the bottom of. The only thing I can think of right now is a minimum text penalty (not really a penalty, but it seems to play a big role) because the homepage has almost no text.
Must be a few of you out there using flash on a homepage. What's your views?
He goes on to recommend providing a non-Flash "escape hatch" of text links that still allow you to traverse the site without going into the Flash pages. Or you can add text links on HTML pages that have Flash (e.g. a static text "skip intro" link that bypasses the Flash). That will help with any search engine bots that don't know how to crawl Flash .swf files.
His rule of thumb is make sure that you can reach any page with a static text link (something like a site map usually).
I've done all he suggests here with this page, but so far, PR is not being transferred to the internal pages. Every internal page remains stuck on PR1 :-(
Don't go overboard with the text though - try to keep it just to the content that is already covered in the Flash file - as technically this technique is cloaking. ;)
/-m
Flash is bad for search engines. Tell the client to ditch it or be satisfied with the consequences.
Those flash spash screens also have a tendancy to cause a lot of back buttons to get hit. It is very rare for a searcher to appreciate them the way the site owners do.
Imagine you are in a mall where all the stores sell pretty much the same things. Most of the stores have the items you are looking for out on shelves right as you walk in.
But some of the stores make you stand there and watch a 30 second song and dance about how wonderful they are before allowing you in. And every time you go to the store, that song and dance is still required.
Flash is useful for some things, but the way lots of sites use it is to proclaim "Hey look at us, we know flash".
As for google following flash links, that is in no way a guarantee that those links will be included in PR calculations.
Google will find it if you put an URL into text on your HTML page without making it into a link, but as far as I can tell, that URL is not given any PR. It is quite possible that they treat Flash links the same way.
