[SWFObject] SWFObject VS Google Quality Guidelines

[Pablo Garayzábal]

Hi,

 

As previously discussed here, another advantage of using SWFObject is that
you can place html content inside the div layers so that it will be read by
search spiders but won’t be visible to the visitors.  (It’s replaced by a
swf file).

 

For example

<div id=”myLayer”>

            Here is a text with keywords, links etc, just for search engine
optimization.

</div>

<script>

var fo=new SWFObject(
.);

            fo.write(“myLayer”); 

</script>

 

So, If you do this, the fact is that you are creating content just for the
search engines, and that it is invisible or hidden for the visitors.

Doing this seems to break the two first rules of Google Quality guidelines:

 

As you can see in this link:

 
<http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality
>
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality

 

Quality guidelines - basic principles

*	Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your
users or present different content to search engines than you display to
users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking." 
*	


Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

*	Avoid hidden text or hidden links. 
*	Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. 
*	


Placing content inside the SWFObject target layers can be considered as
“cloaking”? 
or as hiding text or links?  
both?

 

These are the FIRST two things google claims to be avoided.

 

So
 what do you think?  

 

A first approach can be: “Don’t place content for google, just a message for
people who don’t have flash installed.”  Ok but
 what is the difference? Can
google see the difference?

 

As Geoff said in a recent post: Try to search for this in google: “This text
is replaced by the Flash movie.” 

This text is the one used in Geoff’s examples, and a lot of people have just
copied and pasted it in their pages, so google has about 5.140.000 results,
so it must be aware of this issue now (
or not?)

 

Does google recognize semantics? Is it allowing the “This text is replaced
by the Flash movie.”, but will penalize other messages like, for example,
“The best IT company, IT services, consulting”,?

 

Pablo.

 

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