Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

Anyone with even a basic understanding of search engines knows that Adobe’s animation platform Flash has always been a huge negative when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Flash by nature combines all elements of an animation / content piece into one file (SWF) and whatever lives in that one file is not indexable by search engines. However, that has just changed as both Google and Yahoo have announced improved Flash indexing. How big is this for SEO? It is massive. Previously if a website utilized Flash, a web developer would have to work on adding elements that were indexable and a SEO developer would have to work on various tricks of the trade. Obviously this hindered the development / marketing process and I am sure caused many website owners to limit their use of Flash. Well, not anymore.

According to Google they have been working with Adobe on improving the indexing of all kinds of Flash files - whether snippets like navigation, gadgets or entire websites - by the integration of Adobe’s Flash Player technology. This new Flash indexing algorithm will improve the visibility of Flash content and should have a immediate impact on rankings for Flash heavy websites. Google’s new Flash indexing algorithm will not only be able to index content, but it will also be able to crawl links within the Flash file which will increase content discovery. Basically Google’s goal is to treat a flash file the same way they do a non-Flash website. However, as Google stated this is a work in progress, the new algorithm will not index any other piece of content within the Flash file, that means images and text within the image will not be recognized and indexed.  Also, FLV files will not be indexed. FLV files are videos, like the ones that play on YouTube, and contain no text. Hey, no one said the new algorithm was perfect.

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.

There are however three main technical limitations of the Google’s new Flash algorithm (all of which Google and Adobe are working on).

1. Google still does not execute JavaScript so any website that loads a Flash file via JavaScript would have indexing issues.
2. Google will not index external files that are loaded by a Flash file.
3. Google has issues indexing bidirectional languages like Hebrew and Arabic.

So what about the other Search Engines? According to the Adobe Press Release Yahoo is working closely with both Adobe and Google on Flash indexing. However, Yahoo has yet to role out the new technology but should shortly - keep an eye on the Yahoo Webmaster Blog for an announcement. Microsoft is a different story as Adobe has said that the Flash Player technology has not been made available outside of Google and Yahoo. But, Adobe is currently working on making the technology more widely available.  I would be curious to see how Microsoft’s Flash competitor Silverlight fits into this. I am sure Microsoft is working on something because indexing of content could be a product killer for the boys in Redmond.

Flash and SEO, who knew those two words would ever go together. I am sure more details will come out as time goes on but for now I am going to sit back and think of all the great Flash website I can now create.

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