Website Spider and Visitor Usability - Flash Websites
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If you can, stay away from flash websites. They are a hassle for both users and search engine spiders. Here are some nasty facts about flash:
Search engines still have trouble extracting content from flash websites and ranking separate pages. Though it's possible to rank a flash site, it's harder to do.
Flash sites miss on long tail keywords which deliver up to 30%-60% of visitors, because their content is usually invisible.
Users can't bookmark a page.
There are two types of flash variations. One has a clear URL structure, one does not. For example, if you browse the flash website examples from the first page of this article you will see that when you click on "about us" or "contact us," the URL in the address bar does not change. This means that search engines cannot direct visitors to specific pages even if they learn to read flash better.
Other flash sites do have a clear URL structure, so for example, when you click on the "about us" link, the URL in address bar changes to site.com/about-us. It's more expensive to do this though.
Generally, flash websites have very poor usability. It's best to stay away from building this kind of site.
Jacob's AlertBox
If you're interested in website usability, I highly recommend useit.com, run by Jacob Nielsen. He is recognized as a leader in usability and charges hefty fees for his knowledge. Luckily, much of that knowledge is available on his website for free.
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