I posted a little while back about Google’s better support for Flash movies. At the time I was more worried about the potential for abuse by black hat SEOs however an article dissecting in more detail about what Google can and can’t see in Flash movies has reassured me slightly and what’s more it backs up my belief that if you want to be listing in search engines relying on Flash isn’t going to help.

The biggest thing that I noticed involved where JavaScript is used to embed a Flash movie into the page. In these cases it is unlikely Google will be able to access the Flash movie and therefore your content is again worthless. So if you’re using the fantastic standards compliant swfobject make sure you include backwards compatible object tags to ensure Google sees your movies! Or better still only use Flash where you can’t do the same thing in HTML and CSS.

There is always talk about possible replacements for Google when it comes to search and recently is no difference with the release of Cuil.

However I believe Google’s strength is simply the fact that it has been held by many as their main search engine for so long. For approximately 70% of the search market Google is king and the majority of search users use Google exclusively. People like familiarity and don’t want to have to use new products unless there is seen to be a significant advantage in changing.

Google’s own rapid growth was due to the better quality results it returned in comparison to other search engines. A significant enough advantage at the time for people to move from Yahoo! and Alta Vista.

Of course this isn’t to say that there isn’t going to be a new service that will provide the extra something to get people to switch but with Google’s ability to keep improving and expand their services is going to make toppling them from top spot so much more difficult. Google just doesn’t ignore new ideas online and if they feel they are lacking in a specific area they will come up with their own slant on it. I’m not just talking a copy here but taking the idea and trying to beat the originator at their own game.

It’s therefore difficult for a new upstart to grab too much of Google’s market.

The biggest danger for Google is actually losing the very quality of service that attracted users in the first place. Google results are reportedly deteriorating with more spam and manipulating sites floating to the top. Google run a constant battle of stopping websites employing new techniques to lift their position. In this way Google is a victim of it’s own success - a high position in Google is worth a lot of money to companies and they will certainly try all sorts of new ways to elevate their status.

So it’s all in Google’s hands. They are fighting a battle for control of their own results with increasing difficult tactics to detect such as a new take on link exchanges - the three way link exchange. They have to harden their algorithm to be more difficult to manipulate by adding variables that people just can’t imitate.

If Google keeps their eye on the ball there will be no reason for people to switch services and their future dominance is assured. People’s familiarity with Google will keep them on board.

Google have announced that they are now able to index flash files better than before. I’m hoping Google have tightened things up before launching as otherwise this could give a short period of opportunity to abuse the Google index if loopholes have been left open.

I can’t say this with absolute certainty of course because Google keeps its cards very close to its chest at all times. However the nature of flash movies does give developers different ways of trying to manipulate the Googlebot.

Due to the non linear format of flash movies is it possible to add false frames into a movie containing keyword rich copy that the end user is not going to see? This of course is against the webmaster guidelines but people won’t be able to spot this kind of thing as easily as on a standard HTML page and therefore reporting offenders isn’t going to happen so often.

I’m sure Google have taken steps where they can to try and avoid this but people will always find a way around measures. I’ll be keeping a close eye on search results!

Also the lack of search engine indexing has always been a major reason not to have a flash only website and this might mean more flash only sites will spring up than before. I don’t have a problem with this as long as they are developed as websites with usability in mind rather than just having a splash movie that look pretty but does little else.

The vision of the semantic web was that of Tim Berners-Lee’s - to ensure it was a universal medium for data, information and knowledge.

A noble idea, I’m just not sure this is going to be a realistic goal due to human nature’s tendency to try and exploit technologies for their own ends.

Certainly if this goal is achievable now is the right time for it to take off. There is a buzz online with regard to various technologies that can be used to achieve it (including microformats) with many proponents to semantic web cause.

The issue is that all these methods rely on correct and honest use online. In it’s simplest form the semantic web attempted to use meta tags in years go by. These became a well known method for black hat search engine optimisers to try and shoe horn inappropriate keywords into pages to try and fool the search engines. The result? Search engines generally ignore meta tags because of this easy abuse.

So is this also going to be the case for the new drive for a universal information medium? Not currently maybe. As it stands the uptake isn’t large enough so there doesn’t seem to be any advantage in trying to provide inaccurate data. But just wait until the tipping point is reached I’m sure that search engines will try to lean on this extra layer to improve results. Some people will be waiting to exploit it.

The only thing we can hope is that the lessons constantly being learnt from the constant battle against the black hats can be applied against them again to ensure this new semantic vision isn’t muddied. I also feel that social media is going to become even more of a watchdog for content quality - those millions of eyes put to good use. The advantages of the semantic web can’t be ignored - machines understanding human content opens so many doors.

As usual though the main issue here is getting people to use the technologies. From a business perspective people aren’t going to adopt this without it providing some kind of return on investment. Implementation is simple in most cases so I can perhaps see people dipping their toes in the water and this gradual adoption may start the tide. I for one will be looking at the hCalendar, hCard and XFN formats as a starting point.