[jolo112]

We are doing a major revision of our website and we are thinking about using a slide show of pictures on the home page. The page will still have lots of links and relevant info. But the do the picture slide show hurt Google rankings, what if Flash is used? I am not sure what our developer will be using. Thanks,

[mpilatow]

Flash and other mutlimedia will not hurt Google rankings as long as there is relevant content besides the flash. The problem Google has with flash sites is related to sites built entirely of flash. Sites that do not provide content that Googlebot can actually spider obviously are going to have a hard time being indexed and ranked. If you have some flash along with spiderable content you should be fine. Our site ranks well with some flash on the home page and I see plenty of other sites rank well with flash and other multimedia. Just don't go overboard and design a site that is all flash and no content.

[darrenwoodard]

From My understanding, the Search Engines don't pick up on the images. Therefore, they don't hurt you as long as you have good content on these pages.

[webmaster]

Google Sarasota Real Estate (You market) the top site uses a flash slideshow

[langard]

Depends. Your load time will suffer, regardless, so your server better be up to speed and the majority of your customers better have DSL connections. If you use media as an element instead of the bulk of your content, you'll be fine as others have said above.

You can do slideshows with flash, AJAX or even straight javascript if you want to, whatever fits your audience best. Stay away from Java Applets altogether.

If you are unsure of the audience that you're trying to attract, stay away from media presentations until you do. Giving clients fast, clear, competent real estate information is far more important than trying to entertain them.

[ericbramlett]

You'll be just fine. Make sure they don't incorporate the navigation into the flash. When the spiders get to flash, they just skip over it. If you have your nav built into the flash, it can cause problems getting your whole site crawled.

[ericbramlett]

BTW - I learned this the hard way. Check out the first incarnation of my website:
http://web.archive.org/web/200602180...cbramlett.com/

This one had all kinds of problems & wasn't getting crawled at all. It's a perfect example of what not to do.

[Sam Chapman]

Like langard said, your load time will suffer. How long do you wait for a site to load and when there is a flas presentation and you see a link that says skip intro what do you do? Flash is more a concern in terms of what your visitors will tolerate or like, depending on what you show them.

[ericbramlett]

I think he's talking about incorporating a flash slide show w/ HTML built around it. If this is the way it's done, the slide show is the only piece that will have to load. Browsers can immediately begin scrolling & navigating.

If it's a flash intro - I'm right with you - kill it. Flash intros are crap in terms of user experience & SEO.