Thanks for asking!
A "spider's crawl" through your website offers an indicator of the
difficulty. The Googlebot only sees the following content:
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Welcome to LogHomesPa.net Home Site of Fortini Construction "Our
mission is to build the best log homes in the United States" "I'm
Chuck Fortini i.a , and quality is Job #1"
AddMe.com, free web site submission and promotion to the search
engines
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and the following outbound links:
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http://culpepper/index.htm
http://www.addme.com/
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Forty-one words are available to be read by the Googlebot. Though
there is no publicized minimum limit of content, the Googlebot needs
enough content to determine what the page/site is about and how
important it is. It does this through keyword density analysis and
links to the site from other sites that Google has already determined
to be relevant in the same subject area. Google does -not- use Keyword
Metatags in determining the subject of a webpage.
You may reproduce these checks using the Spider Simulator and Keyword
Density Analyzer at Search Engine World.
Search Engine World - Keyword Density Analyzer
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/kwda.cgi
Search Engine World - Sim Spider
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi
The underlying cause is that the majority of your content is presented
in Flash format. Google doesn't read Flash, though it can extract
links embedded into Flash.
GOOGLE AND FLASH
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Google's own Technical Guidelines state, "Use a text browser such as
Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your
site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as Javascript,
cookies, session ID's, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing
all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may
have trouble crawling your site."
Google Information for Webmasters - Technical Guidelines
://www.google.com/intl/az/webmasters/guidelines.html
"Gregory Markel, Founder/President of Infuse Creative, an
entertainment and technology consulting company, discussed issues
related to search engine visibility and Flash sites. "The good news is
that FAST Search and Google can follow embedded links within the
[Flash] files," he said.
FAST built its Flash indexing capabilities using the Macromedia's
Flash search engine software developer's kit (SDK). The SDK was
designed to convert a Flash file's text and links into HTML for
indexing.
"Not all search engine spiders have the ability to crawl or index
Flash, he said. "As far as I am able to determine, Google has not
included the Flash-SDK setup for indexing, like FAST. But Google can
follow embedded links."
Optimizing Flash for the Search Engines
http://www.wirelessauthority.com.au/r/article/jsp/sid/13073
"Markel warned that the Macromedia's SDK solution is far from perfect.
"All it does is it takes whatever [content] is there, and converts it
to an HTML version. But the converted HTML doesn't include anything
you actually need to do well in the search engines. No title tags, alt
tags, body text, etc. SDK is a step in the right direction, but has a
long way to go."
"So far, Fast Search & Transfer's AlltheWeb has announced support for
the tool and started indexing Flash pages. Google has said it can
extract links from Flash pages but has not adopted the developer kit
Macromedia issued."
Translating Flash for search sites | CNET News.com
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-991617.html
ALTERNATIVES
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Unfortunately, at this time, Google isn't indexing Flash content. Your
alternatives are:
-- Optimize your Flash content for All The Web, and FAST search
engines.
-- Use Macromedia's SDK solution to present an HTML version of your
Flash content.
-- Create a custom equivalent version of HTML, non-Flash content for
search engines and those visitors who do not care to view the site
using Flash. The Googlebot can follow embedded links to this
content from inside your Flash movies, however, it would probably
be more immediately useful to link the non-flash content directly
from your homepage.
FURTHER RESOURCES
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Macromedia Flash SDK
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download/search_engine/
Webmaster World - Google and Flash Files
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/14235.htm
Google Webmaster Guidelines
://www.google.com/intl/az/webmasters/
Search Strategy
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macromedia sdk
"no flash" content
"flash content" google indexing
Should you have any questions about the material or links provided,
please, feel free to ask.
---larre |
Clarification of Answer by
larre-ga
on
13 Aug 2003 12:54 PDT
In order to raise your rankings, you'll need to add content that the
search engines can read, i.e. non-Flash content. You can either add
search-engine readable content to what you have, or replace the Flash
content. The effect will be the same either way.
I recommend this article that explains how to optimize your sales
copy, using your chosen keywords, and keyword phrases:
Copy Sells, Flash Doesn't: Implications for Search Engine Optimization
http://www.rankwrite.com/copysells.htm
I think you'll find these articles helpful, also.
Homepage Writing That Gets Results
http://www.rankwrite.com/homepageinfo.htm
Meta Keyword Tag - Worry No Longer
http://www.rankwrite.com/metakeyword.htm
Micro Content - How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980906.html
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The robots.txt file is a special file that tells search engines what
pages they can read and index. If you have such a file, the robots.txt
validator will point out any potential problems. HTML validation of
your webpages is recommended, but it is not an absolute essential for
indexing. Validated pages are considered to be more easily understood
by the search engines.
---l
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