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.

I posted yesterday about Google crawling forms and have been keeping a close eye on others reactions to this news.

I’m not surprised to read some are not so happy about this news. For example a post on Search Engine Watch states Google is a clear and present danger to corporate data privacy.

It is true that Google is trying to map the invisible web as it is now but I disagree that this should cause a danger to corporate data privacy. We’re not talking about a brute force attack by a piece of software like John the Ripper and in any case if this data isn’t for public eyes then why is it so easily to get hold of? Simply adding a quick Captcha will stop GoogleBot in it’s tracks. Maybe the people who are worried about this should review how they are making the information available.

A post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog is announcing GoogleBot is now crawling through selected forms and therefore indexing search results. Some of the more sharp eyed out there might have spotted this already as your search result pages might have been appearing on Google.

This is certainly interesting from an SEO perspective as it makes a host of other pages available for keyword targeting and in particular the page that is indexed by Google is more likely to be exactly what the searcher is looking for e.g. storage in Birmingham would return a search results page for stores in Birmingham. Which of course should hopefully make the bounce rate drop.

GoogleBot seems to have some requirements from a form before it will try to crawl it including it must use the GET method. As my ASP.NET forms use the POST method, then redirects to a search result page with the form values in the QueryString it means my search forms won’t be crawl-able. Time for me to think of an alternative solution!