CrystalXP.net

Since the beginning of the year, some websites announced that Google was working on indexing web search engine to the Flash format.
Google denied it and it remained a rumour !

But on July 1, 2008, Adobe announced that he had worked with google and Yahoo in order to help them to integrate the content Flash (SWF file) in their indexing.

The flash technology is many utilized for the creation of banners ads, for games, more and more websites are created in Flash... and so far their listing by search engines was difficult.
Indeed, when you run a search on Google or Yahoo, links of results for the Flash did not appear, robots could not read their content. They did not know the difference between a HTML site of a Flash website !

The only mean to succeed to be referencing, a long and sometimes annoying method : create ghosts web pages which are copies of flash pages with HTML content !

Thanks to Adobe, who provided a special version of their Flash player to Google and Yahoo, the search engine robots will finally be able to explore the content of flash animation (legends, menus, database...) and so better index them it. They will able to retrieve URL integrated in applications like in any HTML page ! Beyong, this new technology will be compatible with all versions of Flash.

Google was the first to be able to utilize it and has already begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine.

Attention, all the same there are bears !
Google could not :
- detect with precision images
- index FLV files, only SWF files will be index
- Index Flash content called by JavaScript
- 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
- there will be difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages. Until this is fixed, they will be unable to index Hebrew language or Arabic language content from Flash files.

For Yahoo, the implementation is under way!

A beautiful revolution in the world of referencing websites !

Just hope that unnecessary websites, which can pollute our requests, do not come with this new visibility, which opens new doors on the Web !

Postscript : for some who have a website in Flash, it is better to remain cautious and not to remove duplication of HTML, only Google and Yahoo enjoy the help of Adobe, other search engines such as Microsoft, have not yet it ... and it is better to wait to be sure everything is properly referenced !