Will flash intro hurt spidering?

[MWpro]

My client specifically requested a flash introduction for the site that I have made for him. The intro is on the first site (index.html) and only contains a link to skip the intro to go to the main page. My question is will this hurt the spidering or will it be able to follow that skip intro link to the rest of the page? If it would hurt the spidering, what is a way around it?

[TWhalen]

If the "skip intro" link is a text link, the spiders should be able to find it just fine.

[MWpro]

>>If the "skip intro" link is a text link, the spiders should be able to find it just fine.

Thank you for the quick reply. Yes the link is a text link, but I am still concerned with what will show up as the description on the search engine if someone searches for that. While I have been making web pages for years, I am still trying to learn exactly how the search engines work, so any other information you can give me in regards to my topic would be appreciated.

[keeper]

You can place a description in the Meta description tag, which will be ok for the search engines that support it.

But unfortunately, Google will have your snippet description as "skip intro" as it is the only html content on the page....unless you can add other relevant text on the page.

There is a good post here about Flash and overcoming the inherant issues:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[MWpro]

I was thinking about putting a short description (like 1 sentence) under the flash movie and the skip intro link, however I am worried that it will not look good to the visitor and that the search engines will frown upon that... or is that just text that matches the background color?

On a similar note, I have decided to not use meta tags based on the advice of users on this message board... is this a good decision or should I reconsider?

Also, the intro and the skip intro link to main.html which has lots of information on it... would that show up in the search results too or would it just be what is on index.html?

[HitProf]

Hello MWpro,

I think you mean the keywords meta tag when you say meta tag.

1) You should always use meta tags, there are more search engines then Google alone and some of the use them. Even if Google doesn't use them, they don't hurt.

2) Title and description are very important. Use your main keywords in both.

3) You can place the 'text used in the movie' on the page as plain text which display when the sniffer detects no Flash plugin.

[bloonatic]

BTW: Google does read the meta description tag in some cases. For example: search for <[example-location] hotel>. The first result's description ("Fireworks Splice HTML", stupid :) ) is its meta description. Thus, it can't hurt to have one.

In your case it might be worth trying: I would suppose that Google displays the meta description if the PageRank is decent and there is absolutely no text on the page. Perhaps you can make the link an image link and try this...

[edited by: heini at 6:51 pm (utc) on Feb. 17, 2003]
[edit reason] removed specific / thanks [/edit]

[MWpro]

"Perhaps you can make the link an image link and try this... "

The spider will still follow the link even though it's not a text link, right?

[Sinner_G]

The spider will still follow the link even though it's not a text link, right?

Yes, it just has to be a link in HTML, i.e. <a href= and so on.

[MWpro]

"Yes, it just has to be a link in HTML, i.e. <a href= and so on. "

Excellent, thanks for the help everyone. I've decided to add some nice meta tags, change the skip intro link to an image, and add a short description of the site below that link that fits in nicely. This way some search engines will pick up on the meta tags, and if they don't then they will have to pick up on the short description,