As an SEO I'm always looking for ways to help Flash developers make Flash sites more "search engine friendly". I recently came across an article on the Adobe Developer Connection that sounded interesting at first. As I kept reading, I was surprised by what they call a "solution" for the "one URL per page" issue as it relates to sites in Flash. To solve this deep-linking issue, Adobe proposes a method for directly linking to content that's "buried". The technique they suggest uses a variation of RESTful URLs in Flash. REST or "representational state transfer", basically uses one or more distinct URL/s linking directly to different content or different states of content within web-based applications.
The technique uses a "frame anchor" located in the URL to specify one specific frame in the main timeline. As a result, the playhead jumps to that specific frame in Flash and users with Flash enabled see content associated therein by the Flash developer.
"The syntax for writing a URL to point to a particular anchor location in HTML is to use the pound sign (#) followed by the designated name for the anchor, as in the following examples:
* #section1: a URL that points to the anchor named "section1" in the current HTML page
* some_html_page.html#appendix: a URL that opens the URL some_html_page.html and then scrolls to the anchor named "appendix""
This solution may work for "deep linking" in Flash but it's yet another nightmare when it comes to making Flash sites search engine friendly. Bottom line, Googlebot ignores #anchors but browsers do not. So when users link to "any URL dot com" /home.html#/about.html from their blog, PageRank, "link juice" and/or relevancy intended for about.html is instead given to home.html.