Adobe has unveiled its plans to help enhance users' search experience by allowing search engines to crawl and index dynamic web content and rich internet applications. Michelle Turner, VP of Marketing at Adobe explained "we are releasing technology to Google and Yahoo! that enables them to crawl and index SWF files. They are now searchable. This will open up millions of flash files to search". Adobe has created an optimised Flash player which acts as a virtual user running through each application and translating it into something that search engines can read and understand. The player will allow search engines to read SWF files and index the information contained within them, including texts and links. This means interactive Flash websites and other rich internet applications that have previously been invisible to search engines can now be seen.
Previously, websites with fancy Flash applications may have looked the part, but looks aren't everything if users can't find your site. With this new technology it will mean sites like these will start to feel search benefits as images start to count towards rankings. However, while the technology allows sites to become visible to search engines, it doesn't currently make it any easier for Webmasters or bloggers to link deeply into the flash files. With deep links playing an integral part in a search marketing strategy it looks like it will still be a while before Flash sites become indexed highly in the search rankings.
Currently Google has already added the optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to their search engine, with Yahoo! planning to add it to a future update of Yahoo! Search. Google has explained via their blog that while the new technology improves their ability to index textual content in SWF files, it will not include images and video files.
"At present, we are only discovering and indexing textual content in Flash files. If your Flash files only include images, we will not recognise or index any text that may appear in those images.....Also note that we do not index FLV files, such as the videos that play on YouTube, because these files contain no text elements."
However, despite the limitations the new technology is still a step forward for the world of search - one that could result in some visually appealing sites.
