deconcept

You’ve got your good thing, and I’ve got mine

1. Jody 07/31/2007

   Hey Geoff – any fix for the qtobject.js script and it not working in Internet Explorer 7. I can’t view any embedded video on
   your site and/or ones I’m developing.

   Your expert help would be appreciated.

   Cheers.

   Jody
2. sherwood 08/02/2007

   I attended a session with a Google engineer a couple weeks ago, where he characterized swfobject as a “dangerous” technique for optimizing Flash for search engines. He said that he could not guarantee that swfobject users would not be penalized, even if their implementation was totally above-board:

   http://www.searchmatters.net/2007/07/16/google-flash-fixes-can-be-%e2%80%9cdangerous%e2%80%9d/
3. Geoff 08/02/2007

   Sure, there’s never a guarantee that you won’t be penalized if you abuse any technique.

   There’s a recent post from a googler in the webmaster forum that talks about SWFObject you may be interested in:

   Here’s the text:

   Jason-

   Sorry for the late response! As you already know, talking about Flash
   and SEO can cause important conversations, and the same holds true
   here at Google. However, after soliciting the help of the inimitable
   Adam Lasnik and Greg Grothaus (et al.), I hope the following can clear
   up the running questions:

   The goal of our guidelines against hidden text and cloaking are to
   ensure that a user gets the same information as the Googlebot.
   However, our definition of webspam is dependent on the webmaster’s
   intent. For example, common sense tells us that not all hidden text
   means webspam–e.g. hidden DIV tags for drop-down menus are probably
   not webspam, whereas hidden DIVs stuffed full of unrelated keywords
   are more likely to indicate webspam.

   I bring this up because, although your method is hiding text behind a
   very pretty Flash animation, you are still presenting the same content
   to both the user and the search engine, and offering it through
   different media. This should not harm your search rankings.

   However, Beussery raised a very good point when he said “Content in
   plain view is golden.” If ever your SWFObject were to display an
   “ElephantCo Car Trunks” logo while the standard HTML version was
   showing “ElephantCo Car Trunks–well suited to every vehicle from
   Altima to Z4!” then you would have stumbled into the realm of hiding
   text to modify search behavior, and have crossed over the black-hat
   line.

   I’ve looked over your example site, http://www.blitzagency.com/ and I
   like what I’ve seen. As you describe them, your methods are not
   trying to fool users or Search Engines, which means a good experience
   for both. Although the HTML versions of your pages are not always
   very user-friendly, e.g. visiting http://www.blitzagency.com/clients.html
   with javascript disabled loses the categorization and images
   associated shown in the flash version.

   The only concern I have is where links to your site will be pointing
   and what the link text may say. Googlebot deals with #anchors
   differently than ?arguments. Googlebot treats ?arguments as strict
   part of the URL string, but ignores #anchors, since in normal HTML,
   they all point to the same page…

   Because your (very ingenious) navigation scheme relies on #anchors and
   then dynamically loads the content in flash, the pages people go to
   might . A link pointing to http://www.blitzagency.com/aboutUs.html#clients
   should send pagerank to /aboutUs.html , though the text in the link
   may be associated with the content in clients.html. You could try to
   stop this by including “Link to this page” buttons to encourage
   linking with an #anchor-free URLs.

   Hope this clarifies things-
   -Bergy
4. naidu 08/13/2007

   Flash Player 7 or later and JavaScript
5. Stefan S. 09/06/2007

   I was beginning to think the project might have died!
   I’m looking forward to checking this out.
6. islam 09/21/2007

   Flash player 7 or later and Js.
7. Ben 09/26/2007

   I used your QTObject to create a WMPObject, to be used for Windows Media Player detection and embed. I was going to post the code in your QTObject post comments, but they currently seem to be disabled for that post. Therefore I have posted the code here: http://benpowell.blogspot.com/2007/09/windows-media-player-javascript-detect.html
8. Jonny 11/08/2007

   Thanks downloaded. Looks good.
9. drcetinerdotorg 11/21/2007

   Flash Player 7 or later and JavaScript
10. müzik 01/17/2008

    It is an amazing town, with so much to do. I currently live in Texas but I plan to move out there soon. I will see you there!
11. Geoff 02/25/2008

    Closing comments here due to spam, go to the SWFObject google group if you have SWFObject 2 questions!

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