Reading on SlashDot about buying a domain name from a cyber-squatter it made me think of the constant issues people/new businesses have before they’re really even on the web.

What Domain Name Defines Me, as a Person?

I Am Jack

A Doubel Edged Sword – SEO Domain, Generic Notability

The “cool” factor comes with the right domain. For example, ILoveJackDaniels.com was a cheat sheet repository for web developers (ignoring the fact that it’s changed domains since Jack Daniels doesn’t like nerds). No one in their right mind would associate “web development cheat sheets” with “I love Jack Daniels” (or ilovejackdaniels, if we want to go into semantics of how search engines see domains). What if it was simply, web-cheat-sheets.com (or webcheatsheets.com)? Certainly, we may stumble on it, and it makes sense – but it’s not notable as ILoveJackDaniels.com or something equally creative.

Balance the “Cool Factor” with “Smart Business Move”

If you feel your business depends on your domain, you’ve all ready failed. Your domain does not define you – ever. No one finds my site by researching me – they turn up searching on terms for jquery, mootools, seo, and various other topics I’ve written about. They’ve come here by clicking on my (hopefully) insightful comments on another person’s blog post. Will they remember to come back? Maybe. Maybe they’ll remember the simplicity that is ikeif.net or maybe they’ll think:

What was it? Some site with mootools, jquery, social media, seo… I’ll just throw a few terms in and see what comes up

Hey, maybe I’m not in the first page of results, but then again, until my digital life needs to be on the front page, I don’t need to be.

You Flashed My Google

So Mark Scholl pulled up this nugget of a gem from an October post from Brian Ussery announcing their intent to start indexing flash.

I recall reading this in October, and quite a few people were excited about this – it means the old argument that “Flash isn’t SEO friendly” would boil down to “if you’re a good Flash developer, your stuff will get indexed because you wrote it properly.”

What’s interesting, is the article dives into the fact that the SWF/Flash files will carry their own rage rank – and as such, if you reuse the same SWF on more than one page, keyword thinning can occur (you’re using duplicate content).

So – it’s been a few months, I was curious just *what* was being pulled in by google in terms of flash content, and what was being shown. I used a simple google query that it seems most people have forgotten about.

Custom Google Search – FileType

search: filetype:swf site:ikeif.net

It’s that easy. Run this with some search terms and see if your site’s flash is being indexed like you hoped it would.

Of course, I felt like playing around and seeing what’s happening in the wide world of flash…

How’s my Flash being indexed?

I ran a couple searches against some sites to see how they were being indexed:

Query: filetype:swf site:nationwide.com – What’s interesting is their flash is being indexed (I’m assuming) properly. The descriptions make sense, until you hit number 8 that says “PLAY AGAIN. PLAY AGAIN. 0%”

Query: filetype:swf loading – I did this out of curiousity – much like how it’s been stated that “click here” is the worst possible wording for a link – over three million results for swf’s that say “loading!” Semi-interesting: The number one link is a flash USA Map Test.

Query: filetype:swf site:remhq.com and filetype:swf site:kanyeuniversecity.com – I figured I would have to do a couple band sites, as bands and labels were usually the number one commiters of flash atrocities. These two were high ranking when I searched for “band sites flash” (simple, yet effective). Kanye? Three links. REM? Four pages, all with some pretty good descriptions.

Query: filetype:swf site:roushhonda.com – As I recently moaned about the fact that so many car sites rely too heavilly on flash (mainly because I couldn’t hit their sites on my iPhone). All those listings in flash, none of it being indexed. I settled on Rousch from a search for “used cars columbus“.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

So – we see some areas of needed improvement. SEO for Flash is something that I feel needs to be addressed more often (by designers and developers!) and it’s something our SEO people need to keep in mind and discuss (I’m looking at you, Mark Scholl and Jennifer Laycock!). As this is slowly moving from the “I wish flash was indexed” to “Oh shit, it’s indexed, but not how I want it!” the discussions need to ramp up and we need to start thinking about it.

Find anything interesting in your own google queries? Let us know!