Announcing the Flex SEO Contest

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Peter Elst has a really good post up (with some concerns) about SWF Indexing in some of his Flash files. And it’s clear that a lot is changing and we’re not sure what’s going to be exposed or how it’s going to be exposed.

Flex SEO Contest
But what I’m most worried about is how we can expose valuable data from Flex (and Flash) to search engines in a way that makes the user experience better. So I’m starting a contest in the hopes that the community can learn the best way to expose data from a Flex application to search engines.

Rules
I’ve come up with a phrase: “Fleximagically Searchable” which currently has absolutely no results on Google. In two months, whichever Flex application is number one in the search results wins. Here are the rules:

  • It has to be a Flex application
  • “Fleximagically Searchable” must be dynamically loaded. It can’t be static text inside of your application. – But I don’t care how you load it, in fact that might make a difference in how Google ranks you.
  • The first link must be deep linked directly into where you load “Fleximagically Searchable” into your application. Feel free to use any deep linking methods out there.
  • Nothing in your code can dynamically load the phrase automatically. It has to be the result of a user interaction.
  • You must provide source code and be willing to talk about exactly what you did.
  • Multiple entries are allowed if you want to try different things.

Prizes
The winner will get a copy of CS3 Master Collection (or CS4 if they want to wait) and a copy of Flex Builder 3. Second place gets a copy of Flex Builder 3.

I’m working on getting more prizes. Maybe a MAX pass or other Adobe goodies. If any companies want to contribute prizes or cash or anything to give away, send me an email.

Disclaimer
The rules may change as the contest goes on. The goal is to let the community know the best way to expose content to Google for SEO purposes and to actually have that content deep linked. I think the rules I’ve got cover that but I don’t want someone winning through a loophole. I’ll be checking, posting updates, and letting people know how it’s going over the two months. If you have any questions, feel free to email me. I encourage you to try a bunch of different methods for embedding, for deep linking, and loading data. That’s part of the fun of the contest is seeing what works best.

Also, if anyone wants to do a logo for the contest, that would be awesome.

Related posts:

  1. The MTV/Adobe AIR Contest
  2. Flash Wins in Webware’s Top 100 Contest (I Think Second in the Publishing Category)
  3. Flex Derbying With the Rest of the World
  4. Flex, Flash and Apollo on everything from Digg to Facebook
  5. Bringing Flex and Flash Even Closer to the Web
  • http://blog.natejc.com Nate Chatellier

    Cool contest. Does it have to be done in Flex? Can I use Flash CS3?

    You’re a brave man putting a mailto: link with your e-mail address. Spam bots love those. You might consider changing it…

  • ryanstewart

    I figure Adobe pays for spam filtering, I should make use of it :)

    This contest is only Flex mostly because I want to see if the best practices are different for Flex and Flash applications. I’ll either run a second contest for Flash or bug Lee Brimelow to do it.

    =Ryan

  • http://www.iotashan.com Shan

    Perhaps entrants can get a link from a high pagerank site like, say, this one? Otherwise, people with already great pageranks have quite the advantage :)

    Perhaps a weekly post of the entries for the week, or the like.

  • http://blog.natejc.com Nate Chatellier

    A second contest would give even more information to the community about how search engines handle Flash and Flex compiled content differently, or would at least tell us that there is not a difference. Either of which would be valuable information. Tell Lee to get right on this :)

  • http://phillipkerman.com/blog Phillip Kerman

    Good idea for a contest… but (and this is a different topic I suppose) but the whole idea of getting a better page rank is goofy. Sure, people want this… but in my opinion it’s not about “tricking google” but a matter of of google getting better at giving people what they want in a search. For example, if I type in “Ryan Stewart” despite any SEO tricks that I pull, one would hope that I find your page… not some scam site that happens to have a trick for Google.

    You may find a “winner” (and guess what: THIS page had better be the top page rank or I’ll lose faith in google). However, ultimately, whatever trick they used (and are willing to talk about) won’t necessarily work later. In fact, if it did then I’d question google’s ability to find what people want.

    I know I’m going off on the subject of whether SEO makes sense, but I really think the entire topic is ill-advised. See my parody of SEO from a few weeks back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCY042q9gPs

  • ryanstewart

    My hope is that this has little to do with PageRank. In fact, I’ll be curious to see if Google applies the page rank the same way to Flash files as it does to regular HTML sites.

    The goal is more to see what kind of tricks affect how Google ranks. Does SWFObject help or hurt ranking? Does a specific deep linking trick work better than others? I hope by getting a lot of people to try different things we’ll get a picture of what works best when trying to expose data.

    I realize the “winner” may have something to do with Page Rank, but looking at the entire first page should be valuable.

  • http://www.meridiancrest.com Dwight ahringer

    I’m in, but does it have to be FLEX or can it be done in CS3? Please define a little more the requirements, and how the rules may change..

    I’m highly interested to get FLASH more SEO friendly than the traditional methods of on-page optimization and second hand static files.

  • http://www.munkiihouse.com Tony Fendall

    I agree with Phillip. Google are famous for their page rank algorithm, so it’s likely that it’s in there somewhere.

    With regards to your deep linking requirement, does that mean that in order to win, I have to have atleast two view states in my application, and have the button on the non-default one?

  • ryanstewart

    @Dwight, it does have to be Flex. I’m not entirely sure the rules will change, but what I’m trying to gauge is the ability for someone to expose dynamic content to Google and have a unique URL that shows up in google and links directly to that loaded content.

    @Tony, not necessarily. You could have one state with a button, and then load some text when that button is clicked. You’d just have to change the URL to reflect that the button was clicked.

  • http://www.affirmix.com/ Andrew Odri

    Hey Ryan, cool idea, my only concern is that there will be people with very distinct advantages who didn’t necessarily use the most effective techniques specific to flash SEO. Prominent community bloggers are going to have a huge advantage. Google will likely rank them higher as they have a history of posting a lot about flex and likely seo, and have based of inbound links. Certain domains that have flex somewhere in them will have a great advantage.

    Perhaps selecting a search term completely unrelated to search and flex might level the playing field a little. I have no doubt that Google will rank certain site tons higher simply because “fleximagically searchable” is directly related to the volumes of subject matter existing on certain domains and hosts, and that there are portions of the domain relating to this, rather than using effective seo techniques related to flash/flex indexing.

  • http://www.seanmusick.com Sean Musick

    Great idea. I was already doing a pretty basic experiment which I just posted today(http://www.seanmusick.com/blog.cfm?id=26).
    I’ve got a question though. What do you mean exactly by “Nothing in your code can dynamically load the phrase automatically. It has to be the result of a user interaction.” Do you mean the loading the data that holds the string on user interaction, or actually loading/populates a text field on user interaction?

  • http://blog.iconara.net Theo

    Ryan, I think you’ve missed the point somewhat. It wouldn’t even make sense to search engine optimize the majority of Flex applications. There’s simply nothing there to index. As you well know Flex is for building applications, and the data they display is user-generated and often only accessible after logging in.

    It does make sense to SEO the landing page that explains what the application is about, but that is not the same as SEO’ing the application itself, and definitely not what this competition is about.

    Should Google Desktop index Flex Builder? For which search queries do you expect it to show up?

    However, if you strike the must-be-Flex rule I have no specific objection, but you wouldn’t, would you?

    I also have a question about the rules: is the point to show how to use Google’s new indexing scheme, or is the progressive enhancement method allowed? I’d consider to contribute, but only to show that progressive enhancement is the better solution.

  • ryanstewart

    @Andrew, I thought about that, but I’m not sure Google sees “Flex” and “Fleximagically” as the same word. So any boost from blogging about “Flex” shouldn’t make a difference. I hope.

    @Sean, I’m not sure I understand, can you clarify it a bit?

    @Theo, I don’t care about indexing the application, what I care about is indexing content inside the application that you want to expose. Think of a store front. I of course want the store to be exposed, but I also want each individual item to be searchable and deep link to the correct part of my application. So if I’m selling “Fleximagical widgets” then when someone searches for those, I want my Flex application to show up in the results, and I want Google to recognize that I have a unique URL for those so that’s what shows up in the search results. Then the use clicks and is brought to the widget page inside of my Flex application. Does that make sense?

    =Ryan

  • http://seanmusick.com Sean Musick

    Sorry, it was a little late last night when I wrote that. I think I understand now.
    I was just a bit confused by your use of the word “load” both referring to getting the raw data into the application in the second bullet point, and then referring to the displaying the text on user interaction in the fourth bullet point.

  • http://blog.iconara.net Theo

    Ryan: yes it makes sense, for a limited number of use cases. You mention stores, that’s one were it would make sense. However, any application that requires the user to identify herself and/or loads data specific to that user wouldn’t — because it doesn’t have any data that Google should get its hands on. I would say that the majority of Flex applications fall in that category.

  • http://blog.iconara.net Theo

    Oh, and you didn’t say if progressive enhancement is OK. By progressive enhancement I mean serving HTML content which is replaced by the Flex application if the visitor has Flash. Google would crawl the HTML, the visitor would in most cases see the Flex application. Is this an acceptable solution, or is your competition only meant for Google’s new we-crawl-the-SWF indexing?

  • http://www.afhill.com/blog Andrea Hill

    Fantastic idea! I’m not so much into flex development right now, but I’ve sent the details onto my friends so they can try it out :-P

  • http://renanorola.i.ph renan

    I would like to know what contest is available for the month of july

  • dz

    I did a quick search on the words, and I see someone bought the domain http://www.fleximagically-searchable.com. Also, so many people are blogging about this, the term is being over used. It should have been a sign up, and the term/rules are sent to you by email, anyone that buys the domain is automatically disqualified. my 2 cents.

  • http://phillipkerman.com/blog Phillip Kerman

    I say “whatever it takes”… including payola to google. I mean, afterall, you’re embracing the idea of tricking google… so, I say by any means necessary.

  • http://phillipkerman.com/blog Phillip Kerman

    Here’s another trick: use conventional means to get a high page rank… then swap out that page with one that has a .swf. I’ll bet that’d work well.

  • http://www.zedia.net zedia.net

    I am the one who bought the domain http://www.fleximagically-searchable.com. Since there was no specific intruction about not doing so I couldn’t just leave the domain name for someone else to take.

    What bothers me with this contest is that a lot of SEO factors are not necessarily related to the content(be it flash or html). I can quickly name the url and the title of the page, and there are a lot more. So you could just optimize those and win the contest without having your flex application truly optimized. All that without tricking Google.

    With that said the question about progressive enhancement is also really relevant.

  • ryanstewart

    Hey guys, sorry about the lack of response. I want the contest to be as close to regular HTML SEO contests as possible, so buying domain names is just fine – whatever it takes.

    As for progressive enhancement, that wouldn’t work. This has to be Google indexing the SWF and moving through the SWF. I need to see a deep linked SWF url that goes directly to the “fleximagically searchable” phrase.

    Hope that helps.

    =Ryan

  • http://stompernet.com/universe/index.html StomperNet @ Fleximagically Searchable

    Cool, we’re in. Let the games begin.

  • Fil

    How would you determine if a contestant just used flex application the entire contest. Right now I only see only HTML sites who joined and they are now being indexed as an HTML and not as a Flex Application. Problem is Google doesn’t have that distinction.

  • ryanstewart

    @Fil, I’m only counting Flex apps, not the HTML pages you see.

  • http://phillipkerman.com/blog Phillip Kerman

    I’m not planning on entering the contest, but I am willing to take bets that the highest ranked page will be–for the foreseeable future–this page right here!

  • http://www.lifeiscolourful.com Abhijeet

    Just read about this contest at Marco’s blog http://casario.blogs.com/mmworld/

    Would be interesting to see who wins it. But the term would be really spammed in search engines in these two months

    Abhijeet
    http://www.lifeiscolourful.com

  • http://www.zedia.net zedia.net

    I was able to get my application on the top off Google, the problem is Google doesn’t seem to be indexing the content … I was using SWFObject at first and I switched to Object/Embed tags but it made no difference. I am currently loading the content from a php page, I guess I will try something else.

  • http://cyrilhanquez.com Cyril Hanquez

    Hi Ryan,

    here are my first two entries. I have some other ideas of course ! I’m just not sure about the deep linking… need to think :-)

    http://cyrilhanquez.com/blog/2008/07/14/flex-seo-contest-my-two-first-entries/

  • http://casario.blogs.com/fleximagically-searchable/ Fleximagically Searchable

    This ones going to be fun!

  • http://www.stompernet.com/universe/#fleximagically-searchable AndyEd

    The StomperNet entry is now available via deep link:
    http://www.stompernet.com/universe/#fleximagically-searchable

  • http://www.beussery.com/blog/ Brian Ussery

    Grrrreat idea Ryan, can’t wait to see the results! Please let me know if I can help…

    @ zedia.net – I’m pretty sure Google is in the process of rolling out an update to index SWFObject that wasn’t included in the July 1 “launch” of the new algorithm.

    @shan – Wanted to point out, “Toolbar PageRank” is only updated a few times a year, so it may not be visible at the end of the contest.

    @all – “Deep linking” is still a problem for engines, I bet the best deep linker wins!

    Best of luck to everyone! : )

  • Pingback: Flex SEO Contest; I'm running out of titles | zedia flash blog

  • http://jdavid.net jdavid.net

    I am concerned that this will open up linking to only SEO content, rather than allowing developers to better deep link innovative content. Flex Builder is a great tool, and so is Flex, but Flex still generates files that are much to large to enjoy. We develop all of our code for socialhelix in raw AS3 as it creates compiled files that are 10x-100x smaller than Flex files.

  • http://fleximagically.com polyGeek

    Hey Ryan, good idea to spur on the experimentation with SWF indexing. It would be great to win the contest but the attempt itself is worth the effort. I’ve already learned a great deal about SWFAddress, PHP, etc. Enough to fill a new blog full with info.

  • http://fleximagically.com polyGeek

    Oh, one question I forgot to ask: the term ‘fleximagically searchable’ has to be loaded dynamically, correct? I’m trying to keep the term off my homepage but what about deepLinks that might go to a page that displays the term? I think deepLinking is a ‘user interaction’. Do you?

  • http://labs.heymath.com/FleximagicallySearchable Alagu Irulappan

    Hoping that we have played it by the rules here is an answer to to the contest …

    A game for “Fleximagically searchable”
    http://labs.heymath.com/Fleximagically%20Searchable/

  • Ben

    According to Google external content is not linked with the swf file. Is there something I do not understand here?
    http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

    “2. We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.”

  • Ben

    Also from the above link:

    “At this time, content loaded dynamically from resource files is not indexed. We’ve noted this feature request from several webmasters — look for this in a near future update.”

  • http://sympleton.com Joel Fiser

    Looks like I’m in the lead (sympleton.com). The results above me are HTML pages referencing the term Flexmagically Searchable.

    Took aprox. 37 seconds to enter – due to the power of InfiniTree (my Flash-based CMS).

    Flashers – this stuff is very important. We must dispel the SEO myths regarding Flash. BACK / FWD button functionality too.

    However, I tend to agree with Theo that Google is really missing the point with all this jive about searching inside SWFs. Professional Flashers load their content dynamically. That way, to change the content, one doesn’t have to re-compile.

  • http://sympleton.com Joel Fiser

    I will now use a cheap trick in an attempt to increase the incoming link count to my Flexmagically Searchable page:

    Here’s the link:

    http://sympleton.com/index.php?go=4336