Adobe’s Flash has long been a source of frustration for SEOs because, until now, search spiders have not been able to read information contained in .SWF files. This has also been a source of frustration for Adobe, web developers and businesses who require a more artistic image expressed on their websites. Perhaps these problems have been solved.
Google Webmaster Central announced today that Google can now see and index text found in Flash files. That includes Flash based widgets and gadgets like buttons or menus. It also includes sites totally coded in Flash!
This means that Google can now recognize and read all text used in a Flash file that can be seen by a website viewer. Google will even be able to take a snippet of that text to use as the descriptive paragraph found under a reference link on Google search results. Google will now be able to use text on a Flash based site to match that site with search queries.
Search spiders will still not be able to read and reference images contained in a Flash file but the isolation and indexing of text is a major step forward for Adobe and the major search engines. There are a few other limitations though.
Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScripts. If a Flash based site uses JS as a call for the .SWF file, it likely will not be indexed. Also, Google does not consider external content triggered by a link on a Flash file to be associated with the site the Flash file comes from. Lastly, some languages are proving to be a challenge to Google. Arabic or Hebrew language files are not indexable because of a glitch in reading text written in bidirectional languages.
Again, this is a major leap forward for Adobe though it will pose other problems for search engine optimization specialists. Previously our advice for Flash driven sites would be to embed the Flash file in a more standard HTML document. That advise probably won’t change as SEOs will likely have to suggest some clients to have their Flash files redone, an obviously expensive solution. Including standard HTML is still a smarter path unless SEOs are included in the development process from the start.
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