I'm not a huge fan of creating sites with Adobe's Flash. I personally find Flash sites difficult to navigate, bookmark, and retrieve worthwhile information. However, I can understand why the more artistic Web designers and site owners out there prefer to use Flash when building a website. But in my mind, one of the biggest drawbacks with Flash is that Google and other search engines have a difficult time reading and indexing Flash sites. Let's face it, if Google can't search your site then it is highly unlikely your customers will find your site in the first few pages displayed by Google no matter which keywords are being used.
Luckily for Flash fans, Google has changed the rules by improving their search capability for Flash sites.
Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we've improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology.
In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.
So there you have it. I just lost my number one argument against building a site using Flash technology. Web designers and site owners will likely want to read Google's questions and answers pertaining to the improvements with Flash indexing.
Comments
flash is good
I also love creating stuff with Flash, not that I am the most expert programmer, but I have some knowledge of AS2 (and learning 3).
But I must point out one of the most important factors while deciding what kind of technology should be used (among other aspects, but specifically XHTML+CSS+JS vs Flash), which is the target audience.
Depending on your visitors, you might need to use the lightest possible version for users with slow connection, or with disabilities (visual being one of the most important), or with lower or higher resolution screen, or who access your site with mobile devices.
In an ideal situation, you should develop a particular site for each audience (for example, offer content in both XHTML and Flash), but this is not always possible (time or money issues).
Working with XHTML+CSS you can easily (not so much when it comes to advanced positioning in Internet Explorer, particularly IE6) build your site thinking in a lot of different audiences, without having to modify your existing content, but just one css file (or several if you so desire) and required supporting images.
Anyway, I think you should still keep your number one argument against building sites in Flash, as this is new Google indexing is not perfect and it still can't read text if rendered as image (or vectors) inside Flash.
My point of view...
Target Audience
Good point about considering the target audience. I find it challenging enough even with XHTML/CSS to supporting various screen sizes. I'm author of a government site that requires pages no larger than 800x600 resolution (10% of the public...including my father). While many of us have moved to wide screen with high resolution, about 40% of Internet users still have screens at 1024x768.
While flash is not my
While flash is not my favorite format for some of the same reasons that you mentioned, what is interesting about the deal is that Adobe has released a special Flash player to Google to interpret the Flash files. And this special player has been given only to Google and Yahoo, based on the reading that I have done. That means that Microsoft, Ask.com and any other search engine is still out in the cold on this. Google is the biggest source of traffic for any site that I have ever worked on but still don't like the idea that this is something that Adobe still controls the keys to.
So that means that if I develop a large, information rich site in Flash and am dependent on Google for traffic, if Adobe decides to take there toys and go home, I loose a huge portion of my traffic.
I will agree with the other commenter that you really have to consider your audience when you use Flash. And my preferred use for Flash is for individual elements on a page, not for the whole site.
Adobe vs Microsoft
I didn't realize that Adobe and Microsoft haven't partnered together for better search with Flash. I wonder if this has something to do with Microsoft working on a competing format with Silverlight? Probably not a good thing for either company to have Microsoft use Adobe's technology. I too agree that Flash for individual elements is preferred over a whole site.
By the way, good design work on your sites.