In June 2008, Google announced it would start indexing Flash content. Great! Right?

While there are some benefits, there are still some negatives that you should be aware of.

Matthew Elshaw has recently come out with a post about the negative sides of Flash, especially for small business owners.

A couple he mentions are:

    1. Different Content is not on Different URLs

    -All your content will be on one file. There’s no additional pages or individual elements for Google to index.

    2. Basic SEO Tags are Still Missing

    -Anchor text, alt image text, H1 tags will all be lost.

Another great thing Matthew brings up is that

    3. Flash Doesn’t Receive a Lot of Links

    -People won’t be able to copy and link back to your text.

Most SEOs would agree that you shouldn’t go crazy with Flash on your site, but you also shoudn’t get rid of it completely. Use it to make your website more interactive, just keep it scaled back, so you still get good search engine rankings.

Maybe some of these problems will be worked out in the future. For now, just be smart about your content. :)

For more information, visit these blog posts that also talk about SEO and Flash:

http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2008/07/flash-is-still-too-flashy-for.php

http://searchengineland.com/are-the-search-engines-really-indexing-flash-16942

Also, check out Adobe’s Search Engine Optimization Technology Center.