Google and Adobe give a leg up to search engine optimization by making websites created in Flash more readily indexed by search engines.
One long standing hurdle in developing search engine friendly websites has been Flash development. Adobe’s Flash tool set provides a set of utilities for creating dynamic, attractive, animated websites. Until very recently search engines could not index content in websites created using Flash. To address this problem, Google and Adobe are collaborating to improve the ability of search engines to ‘read’ website content contained in Flash files.
Adobe took the lead in making their Flash content more readily indexed by search engines last summer when they provided Google with their Flash technology. Last summer’s hand off of Flash to Google was supplemented last week when Adobe established a new SEO Technology Center for Flash. The SEO Technology Center for Flash is a new website from Adobe that focuses on providing developers with informative and helpful articles for creating Flash websites. Articles posted to the website focus on techniques to make Flash websites better indexed by Google and other leading search engines.
What does this mean for you? As this collaboration between Google and Adobe bears fruit you will likely begin to see more sites developed exclusively in Flash among the top results of a search term in Google. If you are a developer or if you work in search engine optimization this will have a greater impact on you. If you are a web developer, you will likely be able to stop warning clients away from Flash development on those projects where SEO is a key component. If your work is primarily in search engine optimization, you will be able to extend your services to clients whose websites make use of components developed in Flash.
Links to resources online:
- Adobe’s SEO Technology Center website
- Search Engine Land article about crawling Flash content
