Flash Animation – Good or Bad?

Posted by Edwin Lynch on March 13, 2008 in Search Engine Optimisation

Flash is that fancy animation program which makes so many sites look cool and dynamic.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using a program like Flash. Perhaps the main disadvantage is that Flash sites aren’t stored by search engines. Search engines will index your site (so you can be found) by reading all the text that appears on your site and matching it against a massive database of search terms. Unfortunately Flash sites appear as an object (with no text) and so can’t be indexed.

Having said that – you can’t go past a beautifully animated Flash site to present a corporate feel and message.

The best bet is to use both Flash and HTML (normal web code). We here at Geoffreey use code that is easily found and indexed by the search engines, so our sites always appear high in listings. When we really need some fancy animation, we use Flash just for that bit – so that search engine awareness is unaffected and people can easily find your site.