searchable Flash
July 1, 2008
One of the major problems for web designers who want to create sites in Flash is the inability for search engine “spiders” to find the site and its contents. These searchbots can “read” but they cannot “see” anything inside an SWF file. Adobe has recently created a Flash player to allows search engines to convert the Flash file into a format the engine can read. Google has started using the software, and Yahoo is expected to introduce it shortly. The sites, though visible, still may not rank highly in search results.
According to an Adobe press release, “search engines already index static text and links within SWF files,” but the content is hard to detect because of its dynamic nature. The player can find text, but as yet cannot see images or video (although apparently it should make searching for that “non-textual content” easier, if text is also present)/
(Source: TechCrunch “Once Nearly Invisible to Search Engines…”)
(See the Adobe press release and Google’s Webmaster Blog for more detailed information)
