SEO: Flash Is Evil. Five Big Reasons Not to Use Flash.
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Senior Writer
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By Senior Writer
Published on 10/22/2006
Originally published at
sons-not-to-use-flash.htm">Five Big Reasons Not to Use
Flash
Building Flash-powered websites is wrong. Storing your content
in Flash movies is wrong. Implementing site navigation in Flash
is wrong.
Then why are there so many Flash sites? They look pretty with
all those neat vector graphics, gradients, animations and cool
sound effects. Flash is the favorite toy of big designer studios
and numerous amateur graphic artists alike. Flash is visually
attractive, and in general attractive websites are more
successful than the ugly ones (notable exceptions:
craigslist.org and plentyoffish.com). But this is
not the case of Flash websites. All the benefits of the nice
outlook are overridden by the disadvantages in terms of SEO and
usability.
Flash requires bandwidth
Despite of the DSL Internet access being available almost
everywhere, there are still lots of people surfing the Net via
dialup or other limited bandwidth connection. Flash files,
especially those using sound effects, embedded movies or bitmap
images, can take a while to load.
Disabled back button
Some Flash designers use meta refreshes or other tricks to
disable browser's Back button. As the famous usability expert
Jacob Nielsen says, 'Back button is the second most important
navigation element after hyperlinks'. People not able to use
Back button will click the third most important navigation
element - that X button in the top right. Besides, if you are
going to promote a Flash site via PPC, you should know that
Google AdWords doesn't approve pages with disabled back
button.
Flash ignores users needs
Whereas the ground rules of marketing emphasize the
concentration on the users' needs, Flash websites ignore them.
Take the infamous site intros and splash screens that are as
much annoying as the 45 minutes of advertising and previews in
cinemas. Or another example: the sound effects - they are can be
especially inappropriate and harmful when you are browsing the
Net from a cubicle in a quiet office or from home in the late
hours.
Problems with third-party Flash developers
Unless you do Flash yourself, you might face some serious
troubles with developers. Some of them code their project to
prevent them from editing, thus making you to hire them over and
over again as you need to do even the smallest modifications.
Aaron Wall in his href="http://www.seobook.com/rf/idevaffiliate.php?id=1077">SEOBoo
k (a highly recommended SEO reading) describes a case of a
Flash developer who disabled the back button and then asked
$4000 from his client to re-enable it, although the problem was
caused by his own incompetence.
Search engines do not like Flash
And perhaps the most important: not every search engine is able
to crawl and index the content of Flash movies. Even those that
can often do it with errors. This is in particular the case of a
website fully implemented in Flash as a single file. Search
engines just wouldn't be able to direct visitors to the proper
page within that file.
What is Flash really good for? Banners and ads - it provides far
more useful features then the traditional gif animation. Online
games - remember the 'Yeti Sports'? Flash technology - the Flash
videos - for video blogs.
But as a website engine - Flash is evil!
Get more useful info on search engine optimiation at our
About the author:
Oleg Ishenko, MCSE, MCDBA, BSc, 8 yrs of IT experience, gives
useful advice on search engine optimizations at his blog
Research
SEO: Flash Is Evil. Five Big Reasons Not to Use Flash.
Originally published at
sons-not-to-use-flash.htm">Five Big Reasons Not to Use
Flash
Building Flash-powered websites is wrong. Storing your content
in Flash movies is wrong. Implementing site navigation in Flash
is wrong.
Then why are there so many Flash sites? They look pretty with
all those neat vector graphics, gradients, animations and cool
sound effects. Flash is the favorite toy of big designer studios
and numerous amateur graphic artists alike. Flash is visually
attractive, and in general attractive websites are more
successful than the ugly ones (notable exceptions:
craigslist.org and plentyoffish.com). But this is
not the case of Flash websites. All the benefits of the nice
outlook are overridden by the disadvantages in terms of SEO and
usability.
Flash requires bandwidth
Despite of the DSL Internet access being available almost
everywhere, there are still lots of people surfing the Net via
dialup or other limited bandwidth connection. Flash files,
especially those using sound effects, embedded movies or bitmap
images, can take a while to load.
Disabled back button
Some Flash designers use meta refreshes or other tricks to
disable browser's Back button. As the famous usability expert
Jacob Nielsen says, 'Back button is the second most important
navigation element after hyperlinks'. People not able to use
Back button will click the third most important navigation
element - that X button in the top right. Besides, if you are
going to promote a Flash site via PPC, you should know that
Google AdWords doesn't approve pages with disabled back
button.
Flash ignores users needs
Whereas the ground rules of marketing emphasize the
concentration on the users' needs, Flash websites ignore them.
Take the infamous site intros and splash screens that are as
much annoying as the 45 minutes of advertising and previews in
cinemas. Or another example: the sound effects - they are can be
especially inappropriate and harmful when you are browsing the
Net from a cubicle in a quiet office or from home in the late
hours.
Problems with third-party Flash developers
Unless you do Flash yourself, you might face some serious
troubles with developers. Some of them code their project to
prevent them from editing, thus making you to hire them over and
over again as you need to do even the smallest modifications.
Aaron Wall in his href="http://www.seobook.com/rf/idevaffiliate.php?id=1077">SEOBoo
k (a highly recommended SEO reading) describes a case of a
Flash developer who disabled the back button and then asked
$4000 from his client to re-enable it, although the problem was
caused by his own incompetence.
Search engines do not like Flash
And perhaps the most important: not every search engine is able
to crawl and index the content of Flash movies. Even those that
can often do it with errors. This is in particular the case of a
website fully implemented in Flash as a single file. Search
engines just wouldn't be able to direct visitors to the proper
page within that file.
What is Flash really good for? Banners and ads - it provides far
more useful features then the traditional gif animation. Online
games - remember the 'Yeti Sports'? Flash technology - the Flash
videos - for video blogs.
But as a website engine - Flash is evil!
Get more useful info on search engine optimiation at our
About the author:
Oleg Ishenko, MCSE, MCDBA, BSc, 8 yrs of IT experience, gives
useful advice on search engine optimizations at his blog
Research