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Now, More Results To “Flash” In Your Web Search
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OK, all the SEO advices apart, I have always maintained that the best looking websites 
that I have ever seen were all Flash websites. Flash is a tricky tool, if used well, it can create wonders for your website, but if not handled properly, it can completely ruin the experience. Hence, it takes a real master to create beautiful looking websites using Flash. But alas, they used to be left out to their other less-attractive counterparts when it came to web search results. As the crawlers from all the search engines used to index text, the Flash websites, at times having much superior content compared to the plain HTML pages, used to be left out. Many of the so-called experts in web have, at times, offered their opinions on how a particular website is doomed just because it used Flash. Time for all of them to eat the humble pie.
Adobe has announced that it’s working with Google and Yahoo to help them develops search algorithms that will index Flash content better, making it searchable, just as the normal text data.
This is from the Adobe Press Release,
“Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the company is teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe is providing optimized Adobe® Flash® Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines. This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player”
Strangely, Microsoft is mentioned nowhere. Seems like its left out either in this phase, or has opted out from this completely. With Microsoft’s strong focus on Web now, why this has happened, is still a mystery, at least to me.
The good thing is that the developers of Flash applications will not have to make any changes to the way they design Flash applications
“RIA developers and rich Web content producers won’t need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable - they can now be confident it can be found by users around the globe”
Speaking on the occasion David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe said,
“Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player. We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”
No, you still cannot search text in FLV files. This is mainly because FLV filed are videos. And Adobe thinks it’s alright not to include FLV videos in web search.
Good news for all the web developers working on Flash. Even better news for users like us.
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