Header graphic for print
Real Lawyers Have Blogs On the topic of the law, firm marketing, social media, & baseball

Flash and search engines do not mix for professional services websites

The Google Blogoscoped blog reminds us that “Flash is not the right format if you want your content indexed properly by Google and others.” And if your're curious about how much text a search engine may still when a site uses Flash (software that makes site do the fancy movements with text, images and graphics), the suggest trying SE-Flash.com.

Flash sucks for search engines, there's just no other way to put it. Law firms and professional services firms use as much flash to do pretty things on the first page of their Web sites as just about anyone. And I assume it is not because they like to do things that suck.

Here's the deal. Google indexes content – text it can see on a Web page. Web pages with a flash file often include little, if any, text. The result is that Google cannot tell who you are, what you do nor where you are located. That's not good.

I am always looking at prospective client's Web sites. I look at them, see all the flash which they have been sold, and conclude that sucks for marketing their firm. I tactfully tell them what what they are doing with their website will not get their website found on the search engines.

Here's some law firms, who may like the looks of their Website, but because of flash whose site will perform very poorly on the search engines:

Bottom line, just say no to flash.

  • Jesse Newland

    There are still some instances where Flash can be used to augment text content in a way that Google will index.
    For example, sixapart uses flash for the sub-headers on their site. These aren't implemented as a traditional embedded flash applet however – they're adding using an advanced technique called Scalable Inman Flash Replacement, or SiFR. This technique allows normal h2 headers (or any DOM element, for that matter) to be replaced with a flash applet that displays the same text, but in any font of the designer's choosing.
    This technique is used by many other big sites to display headlines in the font of their choosing without creating a new graphic every time. This saves an amazing amount of time at a site that pumps out volumes of articles, such as abcnews.go.com.
    Flash is great for adding a bit of life and movement to your site, but to keep your content indexed by Google, you must make sure that any text contained within a Flash movie is also present in the HTML of your page. That's the key.