Making Flash Searchable

The announcement by Adobe in the first week of July 2008 has come as a huge relief for many web developers and advertisers! Adobe has changed the world of web designing forever by announcing that it will provide sites such as Yahoo! and Google new software to make Flash searchable. Up until now, Flash content was invisible to current search technologies due to the fact that it was buried inside Adobe’s SWF Flash file format.

So by rolling out this new software, Adobe makes it possible for search engines like Google and Yahoo! to crawl as well as index the content.

What this announcement also means is that it will allow the search of Flash-based web content on Flash. This will help the pages inside Flash-based sites to be displayed higher in the search results. So the Google and Yahoo! search engine spiders will now be able to index SWF content. This also includes Flash “gadget” options, such as menus or buttons.

Web Design | Soap Media

What Does This Mean for Users?

For a user, this means that search results would cover better and more relevant details.
Adobe will provide Google and Yahoo! a particular software code and a special Flash player version to expose its earlier-hidden Flash content. With this technical hurdle out of the way, new business opportunities are bound to emerge.

This improvement in technology will also enable sites, such as Google and Yahoo!, to identify a vast range of text embedded within the Flash-based content. As we already know, most of the Flash sites are splattered with advertisements or sell products or promote movies. With the improved Adobe technology, these sites will be displayed more effectively when consumers click their search queries.

Remember, the main aspect is that Flash sites will be shown higher in Google search results. So, consumers can have better choices when they determine what they want to click on.

What Does This Mean for Web Designers and Website Developers?

For web designers and developers, Adobe’s latest move means that they can save considerable amounts of time and effort to minimize the tricks they typically use for Flash enabled sites. These tricks had until now helped them to get around the problem with search engines. Now, the searches for Flash content will no longer pose a problem.

Adobe | Soap Media

The good news doesn’t stop here. Adobe is also planning to explore better ways to make this technology available to other search vendors.

As more content gets indexed and search engine result rankings show up with more relevant content from Flash powered sites, search engine optimizers would be ready to leverage better ranking methods on these Flash-based websites, just as they do on HTML-based sites.

Written by
Adam Davis
Adam Davis

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