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“Fleximagically Searchable” – By the Rules

Devon O. · July 13, 2008 · Flash · 9 comments
4

During my usual daily blog browse, I ran across this interesting contest by Ryan Stewart. The idea, or at least so it seemed to me, was to see if the new method of swf indexing being hammered out by Google and Adobe would be capable of making content loaded dynamically into swf files searchable. Now, in my opinion, that probably isn’t possible. Of course I have been known to be wrong once or twice. It seems to do that though, Google would have to sniff through the .swf files and discover links to other files (.xml, .php, etc.) then follow those links to see what they contained and index that content. Well, okay, it may be possible, certainly. But, is that what Google is really up to – I doubt it. Regardless, though, it sounded like a great idea for a contest and I thought, hey, maybe someone just might figure out a way of linking to an external file that Google could come along and index. So, I sat down and hammered out my attempt. But then I went back and read through all the comments on Ryan’s  blog post.

It seems someone actually went out and bought the domain http://www.fleximagically-searchable.com/. Not only that, but they then also named the .swf file “Fleximagically.swf”. Well, that pretty much ends the contest, right there. Unless someone actually pays Google for rank placement (which, I guess, would still be cheaper than buying a Creative Suite Master Collection), it’s fairly obvious who will win the contest. And the sad thing is, it will demonstrate actually nothing about what the contest is about. Now, I had no misconceptions about winning, but I was excited to see what people would do in order to win fairly. Hopefully we still might find out.

Anyway, my entry can be seen here. And if you’d like to jump straight to the loaded content (perhaps the deep linking will help ratings) click here. Nowhere in the url, .swf file, or html, will you find the words “fleximagically” or “searchable”. All references to the hot key words are 100% dynamic content added only when you click on the load content button, as the contest rules pretty clearly state. It may not win, but I’m really curious to see if it will ever rank at all…

And I’ll have plenty of time to wait and see as I get back underway for 3 more weeks starting tomorrow. Just when I got most of the salt washed off from the last cruise. The Sea is definitely not my life, my love or my lady. She just lives on the other side of it…

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9 Comments:
  1. No, Adobe have given google a modified version of the player – so the player can visit the site like you and I do, follow ‘links’ (read buttons) that are on screen, and parse and text data presented… this isn’t just about remote – a static swf can be indexed, take a look for yourself by googling for some text plus filetype:swf

    Yan · July 13, 2008
  2. That’s what I thought. I have done a few google searches for .swf filetypes and it seems to turn up either static text or text that is placed in dynamic textfields “manually.” I have little hope that what I did in this Flex thing will be indexed at all, but it would be amazing. And the contest did say not to put the actual text inside the .swf itself.. I’ll try another approach when I’m back on dry land in 3 weeks..

    Devon O. · July 14, 2008
  3. You could always forward it on to Ryan Stewart and see what he’ll do about it. He stated that the rules are dynamic so if there is something that gives someone an unfair boost in stats (that really doesn’t help quantify whether the deep linking is helping his stats or the site name).

    Gareth Arch · July 14, 2008
  4. I am the one who bought the domain name. I get your point about the goal of the project, but if I were to try to reference a flex application for real, that’s exactly what I would do. The thing is, from the Google’s result, we can see that my content inside the swf is not indexed at all. It’s the same thing with all the participant of this contest. Just Google “fleximagically searchable filetype:swf” to see what I mean. I will be making more entries to the contest to test other stuff, with that in mind, I think we will all learn something.

    Good luck in the contest.

    zedia.net · July 14, 2008
  5. Thanks for the entry Devon, that’s EXACTLY what I’m looking for.

    I’m fine with people buying the domain names. In fact the person who bought Fleximagically actually shows up below your blog post right now. The other problem is that Google isn’t indexing the content in his SWF file at all.

    Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be indexing ANYONE’s SWF content. Searching for the term just brings up HTML pages right now.

    =Ryan
    rstewart@adobe.com

    Ryan Stewart · July 14, 2008
  6. Thank you for the comments all. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was bitter about the domain name. As far as winning the contest goes, that was a brilliant idea. And I totally understand your point. If I was doing the application “for real” that is what I would do as well. I’d also mention the search terms at least 5 times in the html (title, keywords, description and at least twice in the div that would be replaced by the .swf). My only “concern” was that doing all those wouldn’t teach us (the community that is) anything – we already know that Google can sniff out domain names, some html content, file names, etc. We’re just trying to figure out what new things (hopefully dynamic content wise) it can find. Unfortunately, the answer so far seems to be none. I have found that with Flash, if you create a static text field within the IDE then push it off the stage where it will never be seen by the end user, that content will actually be indexed. Which, of course, is great for Flash but kind of leaves Flex folks high and dry. Makes me wonder if there’s a method of injecting xmp data into a Flex made .swf – and if even that data will be collected by Google. Just a waiting game at this point. Though I do believe that if someone discovers a method of making dynamically loaded content searchable, they definitely deserve to win the contest.

    Devon O. · July 15, 2008
  7. I bought up FlexiMagically.com. When I got it FlexiMagically-Searchable.com was still available but that sounds like a odd domain name so I passed. Beside, anyone could go out and buy Fleximagically-searchable.whatever and get the same results.

    I think we’re on the same page with our goals. I’d love to win the contest – I even have a $100 offer to the site that sends me the most incoming traffic by the end of August. But more importantly I want to see “what” Google sees, and Yahoo for that matter. I have Google Analytics getting traffic results on my site, and Google Webmaster Tools to “see” what Google sees. In time, I hope, I’ll have some data to share with the community.

    polyGeek · July 25, 2008
  8. We attempted a different approach. We created game that follows the rules strictly making a true Flex application.

    We will sharing the results of this experiment freely with the community.

    Check the game at http://labs.heymath.com/Fleximagically%20Searchable/

    ~ Ananth

    Anantharaman · August 04, 2008
  9. Interesting approach Anantharaman. Good idea…

    Devon O. · August 04, 2008

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Devon O. Wolfgang

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