[SWFObject] SWFObject VS Google Quality Guidelines

[Geoff Stearns]

Google actually recommends that you build an HTML version of the site  
for it to crawl, instead of your Flash content. So I see SWFObject as  
just streamlining that method.

Jesse Warden has an old blog post about it if you want to dig it up  
(try searching for "jesterxl google flash" or something similar)

However, if you were in fact putting a bunch of keywords and repeated  
search phrases in your replaced 'alternate' content, and some human  
from google looked at it, i can imagine they wouldn't be too happy  
about it.

SWFObject is just a tool - you get to use it however you want.


On Aug 16, 2006, at 7:51 PM, Pablo Garayzábal wrote:

>
>
> 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
>
>
>
> 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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