SifR is perhaps one of the most underrated techniques in optimizing flash sites for the web. In fact, most SEO books don’t even talk about SifR as it’s considered an advanced techniques and something that consultants hold dear to their heart. But the technique has been around for a while but all of a sudden people in SEO industry are talking about it in conferences and seminars. Is it because Adobe is focusing on improving flash to make flash sites readable to Googles and Yahoos of this world? Or maybe because it is not a cutting technique anymore. I don’t really know the answer, but a few search engine conferences have made the habit of talking about old news but as long as you have people who pay $2000 to hear the old news, why would you share new content with them?

Well, if you don’t know anything about SifR, here is how it works:

1. A normal (X)HTML page is loaded into the browser.
2. A javascript function is run which first checks that Flash is installed and then looks for whatever tags, ids, or classes you designate.
3. If Flash isn’t installed (or obviously if javascript is turned off), the (X)HTML page displays as normal and nothing further occurs. If Flash is installed, javascript traverses through the source of your page measuring each element you’ve designated as something you’d like “sIFRed”.
4. Once measured, the script creates Flash movies of the same dimensions and overlays them on top of the original elements, pumping the original browser text in as a Flash variable.
5. Actionscript inside of each Flash file then draws that text in your chosen typeface at a 6 point size and scales it up until it fits snugly inside the Flash movie. [Via Mike]

You can also see an example of GE.com. Just check their code, and you’ll see exactly how they are getting indexed for their flash text. At the end of the day, SifR is not for everybody, but if you have a flash-heavy site, you should definitely consider using that (like always don’t go overboard as it can hurt your site’s performance).