Forum Moderators: phranque
I was trying to work out whey there is always major disagreements of the use of new technology within the web, especially on things like flash.
It seems the most emotional advocates of flash and most aggrieved at its difficulty in getting indexed are usually those who spend a lot of time designing flash, or maybe flash sites per se, some who have dedicated their whole business to designing flash sites for clients.
Their "opponents" may well be those who haven't got the time or effort, or motivation to learn yet another technique (and one which takes a fair bit to master I would think.) Hence the ill-will of these discussions. However there is a good number of fairly objectives comment too.
Here's my view, as subjective as it may be, to try to understand these problems by taking a broader view.
I'm interested in other's comments...
It's funny you know. Ive always expected a web search engine to find me "web pages". And what I understand as web pages are fast loading text based documents that have incoming and outgoing links and are truly part of the web.
I've always seen a substantial difference between a web search engine and a search facility of a database of on-line data in general. Image searches by themselves are OK,, but they are not really a web search element, as they don't link to each other, so they hopefully don't appear within a general search at (say) Google unless you are specific that you are looking for an image (say image: or gif: etc).
I was never happy, even when search engines started indexing docs, ppts, pdfs ad-infinitum as part of their regular search. To me these are just on-line data, but not necessarily part of the web as they don't, by nature, link to other parts of the web.
By searching the web I want to get to a good entry point of the interlinked web, not necessarily exactly what I'm looking for, but with links that will find it fast and most importantly put the topic in context, because that is one of the uniques advantages of the web for information search.
Now by finding docs, pdfs, etc and swfs which are more often than not "standalone" documents and virtual islands, to me that is not really a "web search" but a "document search"
To some extent I see the frustrations of people who are worried about their content not getting the exposure it should on search engines, often being a result of their own, perhaps misplaced view, of the mechanics of the web as being something other than at heart a hyperlinked [web] of resources all linked together.
To me it makes absolute sense that a web search should find those documents that are most in harmony with the underlying pure nature of the www. And documents (including swf, ppt, doc, pdf, java AND html xml etc) that seem to be more of an island or a "dead end" are possibly less deserving of indexing or being highly exposed in SERPS.
I think it is true that the "disconnect" started to occur well before the NSF pulled out, and the Web started being seen as a cheap and effective form of A&P.
But before you start thinking I'm a sissy academic yearning for the old days, let me say i have absolutely no problem with people seeing the Web as a vehicle for A&P. However the problem is that advertisers and promoters treated the web as something like a book, a newspaper, or a TV depending on their background (as the Web was new they needed historical frames of reference). Very few advertisers took the time to work out how the web worked, and how it could best be exploited. Simply that advertising on the Web works best when it works within the Webs true nature of an interlinked Web of resources.
It did take Google, and the other search engines to use things like link popularity and PR and theming to start moving the web back to its roots. They had the power to do it, though just in a initial and small way.
Ive rambled.
But the point is, the best way to get exposure in the web is to work within it, not use necessarily the same strategies as you would in print or broadcast media or whatever.
It explains why those who may not "like flash" are not necessarily "technological neanderthals" but maybe just pragmatists who understand the web's key device is linking. Technologies that tend to result in on-line brochures that make it less than natural to link to or from - or be indexed, like doc, pdf or swf or much java, will always be naturally at a disadvantage in an interlinked web world.
Until the search engines became effective people truly had to surf the web, traveling from link to link. People aren't so much surfing now as going on search and devour missions. Banners were effective because they put a URL in your face and that might be the only way you ever saw the site name.
People used to enjoy clicking on a link within a site and being whisked away on an adventure to another site, sometimes quite happy that the subject matter was entirely different. Now people complain when links take them offsite.
My bookmarks used to be filled with hundreds of sites, often because that was the only way I could find them. Now, I have fewer than one hundred.
I don't know that advertising is any less effective though merely because the advertise didn't look at the "historical" way in which the web worked.
In fact, it seems as if we used TV for more than just a frame of reference, we used it as a model. Search engines just allow us to find the channels we want to view rather than trying to click through all of them.
From my perspective Flash/Shockwave can deliver in common areas of every web site where text/graphics fail.
Example: F&Q, customer service, customer support, troubleshooting.
The visitors interest has already been established - they are at your site for a specific reason.
Any product that require some knowledge building to use can benefit greatly by Flash in these areas.
Road directions from the airport to your hotel - is problematic in text, and when distance is a major factor graphics/imagery isn't much better. Flash can make this answer pure simplicity, and easy to remember.
Technical problems - I've had to read ten pages of text, and then a service call once, to find out that I had the wrong cable.
Flash could have animated/narrated these instruction reducing the time to reslove by a factor of 20.
Any & every install instuctions, "how to", tutorials, guides, calculators... or simply:
Channel Enhancements anything that makes the visitors job easier, understanding clearer or shows a better, faster, easier way is Flash/Shockwave's claim to fame.
It adds trust & credibility where flying text, flashing boxes, and moving cross-hairs can't.
[edited by: fathom at 1:38 pm (utc) on Feb. 4, 2003]
I have been saying for years that I'm really starting to miss the olden days when the web was a web. Your post deals with non-html documents that are "dead ends" but I also suggest that the whole PR thing with Google has turned most (well, many, anyway) HTML based sites into the same sorts of dead ends.
At least the past few months have been showing a little bit of quiet turnaround on Google's end. I've noticed that pages on my site with a nice balance of content, inbound links (either internal or external), AND the addition of a couple outbound links kicks up the ranking a few notches. It'll take a year for folks to come around, Folks keep telling me I'm imagining things, but it's working for me, so I'll let them keep telling me that. :)
Great post. The web SHOULD be a web and it's about time we got back to it.
G.
I agree with you on the double-edged sword for PR and link popularity that could defeat the purpose!
However using "interlinking" as a criteria for the "information" indexes and other criteria for commercial indexes has great promise. If you are looking for information, generally the more interlinked it is, the better it is (recency aside but thats another issue)
Pure commercial sites now have good cost-effective ways (relatively to other forms of A&P in other media) to get exposure on the web through PPC etc, but when you are looking for info, how interlinked a document could possibly be a good criteria for ranking.
It just takes PR and link popularity to another (obvious) level. If course there will be heaps of problems with outward link spam!, but iid leave that for another day.
Thats what the Web was designed for. So the basis will naturally support it.
We'll see how it evolves.
G.
P.S. Yup - I remember that "pockets" post by Googleguy. I can't wait until late this spring or this summer when we hear the cries of all the link hogs as their pages dump into the bowels of the Google SERPS. Then, once again, I'll be able to say "I told you so!" :)
