Should You Go Flash Now That It’s Indexable?

Now that Google is trying very hard to make Flash readable to its bots, should you invest in a flash website in hope that it will be readable to Google in the future? My answer is a quick no at this point. Google’s announcement was great for our industry. Flash sites do look better in general than heavy text sites. I think it would work brilliantly for landing pages that are right now not quite readable to Google.

Google, however, has just started working on this whole project. There is a long way to go before Google can claim this project as a 100% success (read the piece on SitePoint about potential problems). Google will get it right finally, but the time is not now. Here are the reasons you shouldn’t invest money in Flash website right now:

• Flash looks good but is not completely indexable yet.
• Technologies such as SiFR can help but text always works better.
• Text sites are in general more search engine friendly and have less load.
• AJAXification can compete with Flashification.
• Flex is still not where it needs to be (lots of unresolved issues).
• Flash sites won’t have any advantage over text sites as far as search engines are concerned.
• It’s all about content!!

Need I say more?