Flash The Ripper

Semantic data, content and any other text elements of your Flex application are hidden from search engines by default. Bad. Users should be able to find your app by its data ??” because actually your application does contain the data, despite the fact Google can’t find it inside. So, if you want your great application to be search-able, it is up to you to provide the way for Google.

So ??” how to allow you Flex product entering the Pleroma of happy SERP creatures?

Josh Tynjala of Yahoo! Flash Platform in his recent article “How to make your hot new RIA friendly to search engines” describes an approach based on XML + XSL transformation, which was applied by Ted Patrick in his Flex Directory - a comprehensive list of firms who does Flex development. It works.

Straight and clear idea: provide raw text data (XML) to the search engine, and make it user-candy (did I made this word up?) with XSL transformation. So, Google’s spiders will get their texts and browsers will get their user interfaces built on the same texts ??” all honest, search friendly and flexible.

While this idea is still not widely used, Flash / Flex developers who will apply it right now will benefit from it much more than those who will apply it a year later.

What do you think ??” maybe this is good idea to create a corresponding template for Flex Builder to make it even easier?

Release the spiders!