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Indexing a Flash site

Method works for AV, but not Google

         

dougmcc1

4:41 am on Sep 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have a 100% Flash site and I created text pages for each Flash page on the site. There are 6 pages total, including the index. The index itself is completely HTML (no Flash), except for a few external JavaScripts. The JavaScripts determine if the user has the Flash plugin or not. If they do, then the JavaScript redirects the user to another page with only the Flash movie, set at 100% width and 100% height (in other words, the animated website). If the user doesn't have a Flash plugin, such as a bot, then the JavaScript returns a message of "No Flash plugin detected. You may continue browsing the rest of the text version". And then I have links to my other text pages and a link to Macromedia's Flash Player download page so users can get the plugin to view the animated website.

So the theory is users with the plugin get sent to the page with the actual Flash movie and it happens so fast that they don't realize the real index is all text. Visitors without the plugin, including SE's, can read the text index and follow the links on it to the other text pages.

However, the only engine this is working for is AltaVista. It lists every one of my pages. Google used to list my index, but dropped it within the past week. And it didn't index the text - an exact search for any sentance on my index didn't return the page in the results. It still holds a PR of 2 so it doesn't seem like it got penalized, or if it did it's not showing in the Google toolbar yet.

So I have no idea what is going on. I don't know why Googlebot didn't read any of my text or follow the links to the other pages and I don't know why my index got dropped.

Any ideas?