Google have developed a new algorithm for indexing textual content in flash files of all kinds. They have been working closely with Adobe so that the text within flash files can be indexed. Google can now index the textual content in flash files of all kinds, they can also crawl URLs embedded in Flash files as well! Google says:

“We’ve developed an algorithm that explores Flash files in the same way that a person would, by clicking buttons, entering input, and so on. Our algorithm remembers all of the text that it encounters along the way, and that content is then available to be indexed. We can’t tell you all of the proprietary details, but we can tell you that the algorithm’s effectiveness was improved by utilizing Adobe’s new Searchable SWF library.”

Google said there are 3 current technical limitations of Google’s ability to index Flash:

* Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
* We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.
* While we are able to index Flash in almost all of the languages found on the web, currently there are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages. Until this is fixed, we will be unable to index Hebrew language or Arabic language content from Flash files

Effects of this to bloggers.

It means that a blogger can use a flash logo on his blog instead of a gif, jpeg or png file and not worry about losing some potential traffic. However, it should encourage an increase in flash advertisements. At the moment many advertisements have preferred images instead of flash as their keywords can get indexed via the alt tag in the banner. We may now see some advertisers and affiliate networks pushing more creative and dynamic advertising options to publishers.

The great thing about this new development is that website owners who use Flash do not have to do a thing. Google will not require any special action to make Flash files indexable, the algorithm will interact with the existing Flash file the same way a user would – by navigating through the file.

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Posted August 6th, 2008 at 5:34 pm in category Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.