Rich internet applications (RIA), using Ajax, Flash, or other methods, have always been a problem for search engines.  That’s because search bots don’t have the ability to access content interactively the way humans do. In 2009, Google introduced a proposal for indexing Ajax.  We’ve got clients using lots of Ajax, so naturally, we’ve been watching closely to see what sites are adopting Google’s specification, and how it’s working out for them.

If you need the background on Google’s Ajax crawling specification, here it is in a few bullets:

• In October of 2009, Google proposed a method for developing Ajax-based sites so that the content in those sites would be crawlable.
• Vanessa Fox provided some helpful interpretation on Search Engine Land: “Google May Be Crawling AJAX Now – How To Best Take Advantage Of It.“
• For those who are seriously considering implementation, you can read Google’s full specification.

Public Service Announcement: Because we have a few clients who are considering this specification, we reached out to Google and were pleasantly surprised that they were responsive to our questions regarding implementation. Google’s eagerness to encourage web-wide adoption of the specification means that they may be more open than you might expect in terms of communicating with early adopters. If you are seriously considering implementing Google’s Ajax crawling specification, there is no better time to reach out to Google directly with your technical questions.

Here are some examples of sites using Google’s Ajax indexing specification, and a look at their current indexing status in the Google search engine:

Holiday Inn

The site Holidayinn.com appears to have implemented Google’s Ajax crawling specification (we’ll call it Google-Ajax for short) to a limited extent.

An example of the Google-Ajax protocol can be seen on this page:

http://www.holidayinn.com/hotels/us/en/san-francisco/sfocc/hoteldetail

The Google-Ajax links can be seen by hovering over the links labeled: Rooms, Amenities, Dining and so on.  “Amenities” links to /hoteldetail#!Amenities , “Dining” links to /hoteldetail#!Dining, and so on.

In each of these URLs, the fully rendered javascript can be seen by replacing “#!” with “_escaped_fragment_=”, as seen here:
http://www.holidayinn.com/hotels/us/en/san-francisco/sfocc/hoteldetail?_escaped_fragment_=Amenities — this is the fully generated page that Google uses for indexing purposes.

You can see the “Dining” page in Google’s search results, here:

At this writing, Holiday Inn’s Google-Ajax pages have been live for weeks, but these pages are frustratingly hard to find in Google’s index.We do not know whether the incomplete indexing we’ve observed is because of a glitch in implementation, or if Google’s robot simply hasn’t gotten around to visiting all of these sub-pages.

Facebook

Facebook appears to have fully implemented Google-Ajax.  After some digging, we were able to find examples of Google-Ajax URLs indexed in Google, as seen here:

Facebook is an interesting case study, because in addition to implementing Google’s crawling specification, the site also has alternate content that is browsable without javascript (we call this “degraded” content). After several weeks of watching Google’s index, we are finding that the degraded pages are far more prevalent in Google’s index than the Google-Ajax pages. It’s redundant to have fully degraded content and Google-Ajax in place, so we wonder:  is Facebook planning to keep this redundancy for the sake of Yahoo! and Bing? (There is no official word yet on whether Yahoo! and Bing will support this specification.) Or is Facebook holding off on getting rid of its degraded content until it feels more confident about Google-Ajax? Or are other factors at play?

Google Itself

An excellent example of a successful implementation of the protocol can be found at Google’s GWT showcase site:

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html

Here are some pages within the showcase:

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html#!CwCheckBox

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html#!CwFileUpload

http://gwt.google.com/samples/Showcase/Showcase.html#!CwBasicPopup

A Google site search within the Showcase section shows 154 pages have been indexed from within the Showcase – including pages that are clearly within the Ajax experience:

It’s readily apparent from looking at Google’s cached versions of these pages that Google is indexing the content on each individual page within the Ajax interactive experience on the site. We can conclude that Google web search is indexing Google-Ajax pages just like any other webpage.  We would call this one a total success, which is hardly a surprise, since it’s Google’s own implementation.

It does not appear that Yahoo or Bing have indexed any of these pages.

Bookwhack.com

Bookwhack.com appears to have fully implemented Google’s Ajax Indexing Specification.  Unlike the Facebook implementation, this site relies fully on the Ajax crawling specification to generate crawlable text. We’ll be watching this site closely.

Because we work with clients on optimizing largely- or all-Flash websites, we want to be sure that we fully understand what Google will and won’t index.

So, we formed online experiments, with the goal of answering five burning questions:

1. Will Google index text content inside a Flash movie, even if you have to click within the Flash movie to see this content?
2. Will Google index content inside a Flash movie, regardless of whether it’s embedded with a standard javascript embed or a SWFObject embed?
3. If Google indexes text inside a Flash movie that’s embedded using SWFObject, will it also index the alternate HTML content to that movie?
4. Will Google penalize a page if there isn’t an exact match between the text it finds in a Flash movie and the alternate HTML text?
5. Do the meta tags within Flash (movie properties – title and description, as well as clip properties) factor into Google ranks?

Here are our answers:

1. Will Google index text content inside a Flash movie, even if you have to click within the Flash movie to see this content?

Answer: Yes. We created a Flash movie on Flash Indexing Test Page 2, which displays the word “dogcarpetnail” only after you click on the word “froglipz” in the Flash movie. After waiting several weeks, we searched on Google for the word “dogcarpetnail”, and this is the result we saw:

We can conclude that Google is able to emulate a clicking behavior within the Flash movie, read the text that follows, and factor that in its ranking algorithm. Notice how Google displays the word “dogcarpetnail” in its snippet description, which provides further evidence that it is able to see the text.

***

2. Will Google index content inside a Flash movie, regardless of whether it’s embedded with a standard javascript embed or a SWFObject embed?

Answer: Yes. We created Flash movies on two test pages. On Flash Indexing Test Page 1, we embedded the movie using the standard javascript that comes out of the box in Dreamweaver. On Flash Indexing Test Page 2, we embedded the movie using SWFObject, which is a different javascript code (written by a third party), and is currently the SEO industry’s best practice for Flash embedding. . In both cases, when we searched on Google for words that were contained within the Flash movie, we saw the pages in the search results. You saw the “dogcarpetnail” results above. The results for Test Page 1 were for the word “nosegroggle”:

We can conclude that Google is sufficiently able to run both standard and SWFObect Javascript embedding codes in order to find and index Flash movie content on a web page. (As we’ve stated in our Flash SEO Best Practices article, we like SWFObject embedding because it allows you to provide alternate HTML text.)

***

3. If Google indexes text inside a Flash movie that’s embedded using SWFObject, will it also index the alternate HTML content to that movie?

Answer: Yes. On Flash Indexing Test Page 2, we included HTML alternate content to display if the viewer was without Flash. This content can be seen in Google’s cache of the page, here:

We then tried searching for the word “yizzlewack” on Google, and this page shows up in the results, as seen here:

We can conclude that Google is using both the text within the Flash move and the HTML alternate text as ranking factors.

***

4. Will Google penalize a page if there isn’t an exact match between the text it finds in a Flash movie and the alternate HTML text?

Answer: We don’t think so – at least not automatically. Our pages seemed to do fine although there was no relation between the actual Flash text and the alternate HTML text. However, this would certainly qualify as spam if reviewed by a human being, and we expect that it would be penalized if the Google anti-spam team ever caught it.

***

5. Do the meta properties within Flash (movie properties – title and description, as well as image or clip properties) factor into Google ranks?

Answer: Not that we’ve found. We invented made-up words and put them into the Flash movie properties (title and description), the name and description of an image inside Flash, and the name and description of a movie object inside Flash, and none of these triggered any results in Google. We also tried made-up words as titles within the embedding code, and they also did not show up as results in Google. We think it’s reasonable to conclude that Google does not factor these terms into rankings.

***
The amazing thing about all of this experimentation is that it has had almost no effect on our Flash optimization best practices, which we’ve been following for well over a year! You can read more about how we recommend optimizing Flash in our article, Does Google Index Flash?

The short answer is: Yes.

On July 1, 2008, Adobe announced a breakthrough improvement in Google’s ability to index Flash content.

But – did you know? Google has actually been able to index text content and follow links inside Flash for years. Trouble is, even with the recent improvements, Google and the other search engines still need a significant amount of hand-holding to even do a half-decent job of indexing websites that are built in Flash. That’s why we recommend Flash best practices for SEO.

Flash Best Practices for SEO

To help search engines see and properly list your website contents in their search results, we recommended the following best practices for Flash SEO:

• Use Flash only when necessary, and consider wrapping decorative flash elements in HTML navigation if possible. Pages should degrade gracefully for users who do not have javascript or Flash.
• Build separate HTML landing pages (with distinct URLs) for your separate Flash landing “pages.” Each separate HTML page should deep link to the appropriate part of your Flash movie.
• Embed your Flash using SWFobject so that you can display alternate HTML content. Make sure that the text content in the alternate HTML is as identical as possible to the Flash content. Graphic elements can be described, just as you would describe a photo with a caption or an image ALT tag.
• If you generate your Flash content from an external XML file, use the same XML file to generate the alternate HTML content.

Essentially, for an all-Flash site, you should create “shadow” HTML pages, which display deep-linked Flash for humans, and mimic the Flash experience and content for search engines. These pages can serve as entry points from search engines.

Interestingly, the 7/08 Adobe announcement has not changed our recommendations much. Here are the reasons why:

• Google can see text and links inside the Flash file, and it will even click around within your Flash file to see more content; but it will not split up a Flash file into multiple pages and index them separately. That means that your Flash file will be the equivalent of one, massive HTML page, unless you break it up into multiple HTML landing pages as recommended above.
• If you have content dynamically loading into your Flash movies from an external XML file, this content may not be indexed. UPDATE: We have observed this content indexed as a separate XML file, but not within the HTML page, where you want it seen.
• There is no way to review what the search engines are seeing in your Flash files.
• Using alternate HTML content allows a great deal more control over what search engines see – and allows you to represent the user’s experience of the page more accurately than the search engine’s approximation.

Search engine indexing of Flash is in flux, and we are keeping a close eye on these changes, with the following questions at the top of our mind:

• Will Google start clamping down on alternate HTML content being displayed rather than the Flash movie? This has been a common practice in recent years, but was never officially sanctioned in Google Webmaster Guidelines. With the 2008 announcement, Google may decide that the SEO workarounds are spam – and penalize accordingly.
• What is the best way for us to see what Google sees in our Flash file? The Macromedia Search Engine SDK, which previously provided a rough approximation, is no longer supported by Adobe. Is there a replacement?
• Can content within the Flash file be optimized, with meta tags?

We’ve created a several experiments to better understand the new indexing. Read our Google-Flash-Indexing experiment findings here. If you’ve created something similar and you would like to share your findings, please feel free to contact us.

Future-Proof Your Flash for Google

As we mention above, we do not recommend any immediate change in Flash SEO strategy. However, Google has never officially advocated the common practice (and our current recommended practice) of showing alternate HTML text – and could decide this is “spam” at any time. If this happens, you’ll need to rapidly switch over to a strictly .swf indexing approach. Here’s how to build your Flash so that you can be nimble on your feet if this has to happen:

• Follow the best practices above, but additionally, do the following:
• Optimize your Flash content by matching the name & description in the Accessibility panel to the HTML Title and Meta Description in your HTML page.
• Use actual text in your Flash movie, not bitmaps or vector graphics.
• Make all of your photo images and videos into “movie clips” or “buttons” and then apply the Accessibilty panel to them. Give a unique, descriptive Name and Description to every one of them.
• Read, read, and re-read the Flash accessibility page.
• We confess – we don’t own a screen reader. But if you’re a Flash developer, you should. It’s the closest you’ll get to understanding what a search engine sees in your movies.

With the above optimization in place, you’ll be able to switch off your HTML alternate text at a moment’s notice, and Google will still see an optimized page. Subscribe to our feed and we’ll be sure to keep you up to date on our findings, and future developments.

Read more: Google Flash Test Experiment Findings

This is a test page. We are studying how Google indexes Flash. Formmore information, read our article: Does Google Index Flash?

When you love someone, you want to understand them. That’s why we’re trying so hard to understand exactly how Google indexes Flash. This is a test page. For the full story, read: Does Google Index Flash?

Why would a perfectly respectable website find itself with a spam-blasted Google listing? Follow along and test your own SEO expertise as we walk you through this actual SEO case study. The solution may surprise you!

In our book, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, we recommend a method called “I Wonder Why That’s Happening.”  What is this method?  Nothing more than following your curiosity in a systematic way to discover answers to questions about how your website appears in search engines.  In this case study, we walk you through the “I Wonder Why” steps and ultimately solve our Google mystery.

The Setup

Your friend mentions to you that she’s disappointed with her website’s performance in the search engines.  The site isn’t ranking well and she doesn’t know why.  It’s a comment you hear a lot, but you’re surprised to hear it from her.  Her restaurant, Providence, is one of thehottest places to dine in Los Angeles.

Of course, your friend is a restaurant owner, not a web marketer, but still…with great press and a huge clientele, shouldn’t the website be doing well without much of an effort from the restaurant management? You decide to investigate, using your SEO skills.

What’s your first step? (Click on your answer to move to the next step.)

1. Take a look at the site.
2. Check the site’s rank on the search engines.
3. Check the Google PageRank of the site

]]> http://www.yourseoplan.com/google-snippet-mystery/feed/ 0 http://www.yourseoplan.com/seo-for-flash/ http://www.yourseoplan.com/seo-for-flash/#comments Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:08:08 +0000 Gravity http://seo.shocklab.com/?p=594

If your website was created entirely in Flash, you’ve got a serious SEO challenge on your hands. Follow this advice to remedy your situation:

Note, this article is really good, and the recommendations are solid. But if you’re looking for  updates based on the 2008 indexing annoucement from Google and Adobe, you should look here: Ask the Experts: Does Google Index Flash?

SEO Challenge: A 100% Flash site, with all content and navigation contained within a single Flash movie embedded in a single HTML page. (If your website was built with multiple HTML pages with some embedded Flash components, your situation is significantly less difficult.)

Why is this a problem? A pure Flash site is a major disadvantage for SEO. For one, search engines will see the entire website as a single page. That means that you don’t have the opportunity to optimize different pages for different target keywords. And you also will not gain the inherent SEO advantage that having multiple pages brings to a website: every unique web page has, by default, some degree of search engine status.

Secondly, outside websites cannot link to interior pages within your site – they are forced to link to your top page. Some marketers think this is great: your visitors will always be led to your home page. But you will not be able to take advantage of “deep links” that could bring more visitors to your site and improve your search engine ranks. Deep linking is when other websites link to pages within your site other than your home page. For websites with an online shopping component, deep linking is much better than home page linking because users do not have to navigate (and risk getting lost!) on their way to making a purchase.

Last, while it is true that all the major search engines can index Flash, the content that a search engine spider will be able to extract from your Flash file will probably bear little relation to what your site visitors are seeing (Read our Ask the Experts response, Does Google Index Flash? to learn how to find out what your Flash site looks like to search engines). For example, consider a simple Flash animation showing a line of text moving across the screen. Your human visitors read it as a single instance of the text. But to a search engine spider, it may look like the same words repeated hundreds of times. This is just one example of the many ways that your text optimization can be thrown off in Flash.

What can be done. Here are some possible SEO strategies to improve the optimization of a purely Flash website.

• Break apart the site. You could rebuild your site, breaking up your Flash file and moving each of the major sections to its own HTML page. Flash elements would then be included as-needed on each separate page. From an SEO perspective, this would be a big help. But if you’re like most Flash website owners we know, you probably adore your website and spent a bundle on it, and there’s no way you’re going to break it up and rebuild it as a hybrid HTML/Flash website.  At the very least, think about this approach next time to you do a redesign.
• Get smart with separate URLs. Even if you can’t or won’t break apart your Flash file into separate HTML pages, you can still reap the benefits of having separate URLs by implementing SWF Address like the very clever folks at Blitz agency labs. The blog tells you all about, down to the nitty gritty details that only Flash nerds will follow. Your users will enjoy the browser Back/Forward button functionality and the ability to bookmark your site, and the “linkerati” will still be able to tag pages on social bookmarking sites and deep-link your site. The Blitz folks called their solution “near perfect” and we are mighty impressed, too.
• Focus on off-page factors. “Off-page” factors, which have nothing to do with the optimization of your on-page content, are a major element of search engine ranking algorithms today. Without making any changes to your Flash site, you can still improve your search engine presence by convincing lots of other websites to link to your site. The clickable text that other sites use when they link to your site will affect your rankings for that text. For example, if you wanted to rank well when people search for the term “Flash Goddess,” then you would ask other websites to link to your site like this: “Mary is a true Flash Goddess.” (See our sample link building request letter for a hint at the right way to ask for links – or read our book, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, for more in-depth advice!)

• Take advantage of accessibility features. Your Flash files can be set up with accessibility features to enhance the user experience of disabled site visitors. These same features may also improve the search engine visibility of your content inside Flash. For example, accessibility features in Flash allow the developer to specify a Name and Description for any element in a Flash movie. See Macromedia.com Flash Accessibility and also this article: SWF Metadata in Flash for more information.

• Create HTML alternative content. Experts agree an HTML alternative is the best option for Flash SEO today. Making alternative content in HTML is not only helpful to the search engines, it’s also great for people without the Flash plugin and for visually impaired site visitors. Making alternate HTML content might be easier than you think, especially if you are using XML to feed content into your Flash files – you can feed identical content into an “alternate” space on the page.  Specifics of how to set this up  can get a little technical – see deconcept.com, “A Modern Approach to SEO for Flash” for detailed instructions.

• Create an HTML addendum. As a last-ditch-scenario, if you don’t wish to – or can’t – get your site to show alternate HTML content, at least create some alternate pages that users can manually click on. Beneath your Flash movie, add a standard HTML link or links to your most important content in HTML pages such as “Our Products,” “About Us” and “Contact Us.”

A Flash website has features that you just can’t get from other technologies.  Follow the tips above and you just might be able to enjoy the benefits of Flash without suffering a major SEO downside.

]]> http://www.yourseoplan.com/seo-for-flash/feed/ 1 http://www.yourseoplan.com/monkey-diaries-ii/ http://www.yourseoplan.com/monkey-diaries-ii/#comments Thu, 04 Jan 2007 18:41:08 +0000 Gravity http://obeyjennifer.com/?p=1028

Slow down, Hoobie! And watch out for that Birkenstock.

This is an SEO test page. We are learning how search engines index videos on the web. For more information please read How to Get Video Thumbnails in Google.

]]> http://www.yourseoplan.com/monkey-diaries-ii/feed/ 0 http://www.yourseoplan.com/monkey-diaries-5/ http://www.yourseoplan.com/monkey-diaries-5/#comments Thu, 04 Jan 2007 18:10:59 +0000 Gravity http://obeyjennifer.com/?p=1022

Lucky the Rat Joins Hoobie – but is he a friend or a foe? Only the Marlboro Man knows.

This is an SEO test page. We are learning how search engines index videos on the web. For more information please read How to Get Video Thumbnails in Google.

]]> http://www.yourseoplan.com/monkey-diaries-5/feed/ 0 http://www.yourseoplan.com/head_trauma_movie/ http://www.yourseoplan.com/head_trauma_movie/#comments Fri, 13 Oct 2006 19:54:34 +0000 Gravity http://seo.shocklab.com/?p=643

Making a low-budget independent horror film is hard enough – marketing it can be murder. In this article, Jennifer catches up with an old friend and follows him on a whirlwind tour of innovative social marketing strategies.

When Jennifer first became friends with Lance Weiler about 15 years ago, he was a soft-spoken, long-haired dreamer, a young man who was passionate about independent filmmaking and brimming with big ideas.  These days, the ponytail is gone, but otherwise, Lance is the same.

We caught up with Lance this year during his do-it-yourself nationwide tour to promote his independent feature length horror movie, Head Trauma. Lance made Head Trauma for only $126,000 and he’s now following the film around the country in a swirl of speaking engagements and meetings during its 15-city theatrical release.

To promote his movie, Lance is employing the kind of multi-reach, social-networking-intensive online strategy that falls well beyond the radar of most corporate marketers. You might call it “viral marketing” or “guerrilla marketing,” but Lance’s work is hard to describe with a few trendy marketing buzzwords.  Here’s our take on his innovative approach:

Beyond the Official Movie Website

If you were looking for a job, you wouldn’t just tack your resume out on your front door and call it a day.  Nope, you’d probably send the resume to some prospective employers, post it on a few websites, maybe pass it around in an email to friends and former colleagues, and – we’ve all been there – even dropped one in the mail to cousin Bess who knows someone who might be able to help you.  We call it “multiplying your marketing channels,” and it’s exactly what Lance has done for his movie.

Lance explains, “Many production companies finish their film, then say, ‘Oh, I’d better put up a website.’ So they slap up a trailer and some pretty graphics and it’s done.” These websites are missing out on huge opportunities in online marketing.

Sure, Head Trauma has an official movie website, headtraumamovie.com (see screenshot, below). The site has some very cool and creepy comic book-inspired Flash features. But like any Flash-intensive site, the tradeoff for coolness is a hampered search engine presence. (Read our article on Flash and SEO to learn why Flash is a problem.)  To put it bluntly: if this website were his only online presence, Lance might be having a hard time reaching out to a search engine audience.

But Lance has also created:

• A MySpace page
• 4 other social networking pages
• A separate domain, www.htmob.com, which houses his blog
• A Head Trauma YouTube channel
• A podcast: “Head Trauma Radio”
• Lance’s own website, www.lanceweiler.com
• Two hidden websites within the official website. (You’ll have to uncover these for yourselves…)

By our count that’s ten unique channels that Lance has created for spreading the word about Head Trauma!  Admittedly, managing all of these sites – and their unique content -  is a difficult undertaking.  But Lance’s reward for looking beyond the traditional has been a multitude of venues and pathways for connecting with his target audiences.

Targeting the Elusive Online Buzz

Lance has one overriding (if exhausting) goal: to provide a one-on-one, viewer-to-director experience for his fans. Lance wants his fans to have direct access to him, and he reaches out to them in many personal ways:

Social Networking

• Using MySpace and other social networking sites to target regional audiences in the cities where his movie will be shown in theaters. He starts by doing a regional search of all his “friends,” then he sends out messages encouraging locals to post flyers for his movie. He even gives his volunteers the opportunity to submit photos of those flyers, so that he can personally thank them.
• Personally inviting thousands of “friends” to his social networking pages
• Ditto for his YouTube channel

Email

• Sending regular email newsletters to opt-in fans
• Personally responding to as many emails as humanly possible

Link-building

• Providing buzzworthy content on the official movie site, which includes the hidden websites that add some adventure and mystery. (It sounds obvious, but it bears mentioning: Your website content must appeal to your visitors in order for your marketing efforts to pay off.  This is especially true when you’re looking for that elusive word-of-mouth winner.)
• Personally searching the Web for new blog mentions and reviews, and adding these to his own sites. As a shortcut, Lance tags each post or review using his del.icio.us account, then uses Feedburner (an RSS service) to distribute them to his various blogs and sites.

Podcasting

• Making his podcast, “Head Trauma Radio,” available for embedding in any website.  It’s easy for Lance to phone in his audio blog from wherever he happens to be traveling, and the updates are automatically pushed to the embedded players everywhere.

Lance’s bright ideas and devotion to updating and distributing new content have been great for his Web presence.  Is it working? Yes, in a lot of ways: Lance’s site is ranking well for the incredibly general term “head trauma.” And his DVD is enjoying brisk sales.  Could he be doing better?  Sure.  A quick review of his website shows that it lacks some basic nuts-and-bolts SEO and hasn’t been optimized for DVD sales.  Luckily he’s got an old friend in the search engine marketing business who just might be able to help out a bit!

We know that not every company can gear up in camo pants and go guerrilla on an everyday basis.  But take a closer look at what Lance has been doing and you’ll realize that it’s really just a translation of an old-fashioned personal sales approach to today’s Web medium.  If using the Web to build relationships, loyalty, and fans is a goal of yours, we’re betting you can take some of his ideas and put them to use in your marketing plan.

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