A joining of forces between Adobe and Google will now make it easier for the search engine to index Flash files on a website.
Web developers previously faced numerous SEO challenges if they chose to develop a site using dynamic Flash content because search engine spiders have not been able to accurately interpret or index text, links and information that appear in Flash files.
This made Flash sites (although loved by clients) highly unpopular with designers, developers and search engine optimisers.
Last week Google announced it has launched its new Flash indexing algorithm, a result of a close collaboration with Adobe who has released its Searchable SWF technology and a “search-engine optimized” version of Flash Player.
So what will this mean for the web developers and clients that love what Flash can offer but have been discouraged in SEO circles in regards to website optimisation?
Web developers and clients now won’t have to choose between having dynamic Flash experiences and having website content found on search engines.
Can Google now index everything in a Flash file?
No. But it will index the text and compare with keywords used in Google searches including the text within Flash banners, buttons and menus. Links within a flash file will be able to be followed by Google crawlers.
This will result in better search engine optimization and ultimately a better experience for searchers.
Google still won’t be able to index images within Flash files, or text in the images and will not generate anchor text for non text Flash based links. Google also does not execute some types of javascript so if the web page loads a flash file with javascript the page may miss being indexed - so developers still need to be aware.
As web content has grown increasingly dynamic this is really great news for developers and web searchers alike – Yahoo is also working with Adobe but does not appear to be as far along as Google. Microsoft’s search engine ‘Live search’ seems to be missing from the equation, maybe they are sitting this one out due to Silverlight, their equivalent to Flash?