Google Searches Flash
Google announced today that they now have the ability to index SWF files and include them in their search results. While at first this sounded like great news, further reading revealed that there were several problems with their new feature.
The main problem is that Googlebot does not execute some types of javascript. Just about any site worth anything these days uses Javascript to include the SWF file in a page. This is done to get around the terrible “click to activate” issue in IE - a result of their legal issues with Eolas. The most popular of these Javascript methods is probably SWFObject. There is even talk that Flash CS4 will use the Javascript method as the default way to place SWF into HTML files when published.
Aside from the issues of Javascript, one thing I have not found any information on is the ability to index text that has been converted to graphic symbols. When I am designing anything in Flash, I always “break” the text apart and save it as a graphic symbol. This reduces the size of the final SWF and also prevents uncommon fonts from being replaced if a user does not have it installed.
Does text still have to be “editable” text for Googlebot to index it? Can it see the text if it has been coverted to vector art? My guess is no.
There are of course other issues that have popped up, such as not being able to associate loaded SWFs with the URL of the SWF that loads it and not being able to index content loaded from external sources, such as XML or Text files or a database.
The ability to index Flash content is definitely a step forward for Google. There are sources that say Yahoo is also close to releasing some Flash search capablities as well. I think some of these issues will need to be worked out before it can be a truly useful tool.
