search engine results

If you’ve ever asked any Internet marketer worth his salt about the use of Flash on a website, you’ll know that while it can be used to create visually stunning websites, it’s a complete nightmare from a search engine optimization perspective.

So when Google reported that their search tools are starting to support Flash indexing earlier this month, a lot of people in the industry got a little glint in their eye. But it’s not time to roll out that Flashy website re-design just yet, as Search Engine Land’s Vanessa Fox concluded in this article.

For example, Google hasn’t said whether they are going to award Flash based links the same amount of authority as HTML links. And never forget that, despite the increase in Internet connection speeds over the past couple of years, most of us still don’t want to watch a spinning wheel for 30 seconds while a web page loads.

If you’re seriously considering using Flash in your design, you’d be well advised to (a) read the Google announcement here, and (b) have a long chat with your website marketing person to decide whether your search engine results will be affected.

In my opinion, you’d be better off sticking with good old fashioned HTML for the time being. Let someone else with a bigger marketing budget than yours be the martyr.