Content presented through Flash is always inferior to content presented through standard xHTML regarding search engine indexing and ranking. Search engines like and are able to index content in textual form. Flash has always had this drawback, since its content is compiled within the SWF file and is thus unavailable to search engines. There are methods for bypassing this problem, most common being parallel xHTML and Flash content, where the actual indexable content is shown inside the source code of the page formatted using standard xHMTL, while it’s visually presented through Flash to the website visitor. The search engine sees the source and indexes it, while visitors get the benefit of rich visual presentation from Flash. Theoretically, as long as the content presented through both methods is coherent (similar/same), search engines will not give you any trouble. I read a post on Ajaxian today about what’s possibly a break through regarding the Flash content indexing problem.

SWFAddress, a developer library made by Asual, makes it possible to do deep linking within Flash content, or in other words it is possible to link to specific state of a Flash object on a page. There are plenty of example on Asual.com, so I won’t go into too much detail here, except to emphasize the SEO example which shows how SWFAddress helps developers get their Flash content indexed by search engines. The address is formed in a specific way, which with the help of the library, gets interpreted by the application, and returns the appropriate content which is embedded somewhere inside the Flash object. The example URL is:
http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/samples/seo/
Within it, there is the “portfolio” subsection which in turn has its own subcontent, for example subcontent “1″:
http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/samples/seo/#/portfolio/1/?desc=true&year=2001

I am not sure, but I suppose the URL tail (#/portfolio/1/?desc=true&year=2001) gets passed as parameters to the application residing under “/seo” with the usage of mod_rewrite, and according to these parameters the application serves the proper state of the Flash object, this time pertaining to Portfolio number 1. Although the URL could have been formed a bit better, like:
http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/samples/seo/#/portfolio/1/desc-true-year-2001
for example, to avoid passing of parameters within the URL, which search engines, although getting better at, don’t really like to parse that much, the whole thing works well. Asual give search engine search examples with these pages indexed and shown in search results. So, it works. This is great news, since the Flash content indexing issue has bothered developers for a long time, and has prevented some interesting and informative sites from getting indexed by the search engines.

Head on over to Asual.com and take a look at the examples (and there are plenty of them for different technologies).

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