These days I don’t have much time to leisurely surf the web which is why I love this new feature Google launched in their search results that allows you to skip intro pages on a web site.

What does this mean? If a web site has splash page (introduction) that you are forced to see before viewing the rest of the web site, Google offers busy bodies like myself to skip ahead and go directly to the main page.

Can you hear the ‘glee’ in my blog? I’ve never been a fan of intro pages and apparently so are many others out there there. Thanks Google!

Professional SEO Companies have known as a rule of thumb that excessive use of Flash design can inhibit your ability to rank well in the search engines.

Within the last month, Google announced that its search engine has learned how to crawl Flash. As Google states on their official blog: Now that we’ve launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets.

What does this all mean?  What Google is stating is they have developed a means of crawling “TEXTUAL” content within Flash files that are designed in buttons, menus, banners, and as they have stated self-contained web sites (those designed in Flash). URLs that are linked within Flash files are also crawled and may be added to their search results. Images that are using Flash are currently not supported by Google.

To Summarize:

• Google is now crawling text in some Flash Files.
• The Flash has to be in SWF format.
• SWF files can be gadgets, buttons, banners, menus, and self-contained web sites
• Basically if your site contains these elements, Google will find them and there’s really no need to do anything but wait and see what the results are.

This is just another step in allowing better search results for the variety of design and programming that’s out there today.

Here’s something to do if you’re bored at work (I mean during your lunch break)… Try the handy dandy experimental tool at Google: http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html

Dubbed “Google’s Experimental Search” Google is offering the visitor the chance to experiment with a variety of search displays, and search methods including keyboard shortcuts, and alternate views for your search results. These experiments are real. Should you join one, your Google search will change to this structure until you decide to turn it off. You can test drive and tell Google what you think in their online surveys. I’m personally testing the Info ‘view’ which allows you to view results by different filters such as images, dates, measurements and locations. Give it try!