Google has announced it can now better index Flash content.
In the Webmaster Central Blog on June 30th Google announced it can better index Flash content with the aide of Adobe’s updates to the new Searchable SWF library. Our position on Flash does not change – use it sparingly. Don’t build an entire site in Flash.
I encourage you to read the entire press release as there are some really great questions answered. In particular – Google cannot index text within images that are embedded in your Flash Video, nor will they index external content loaded through seperate text, or html files. It does not mentioned databaes content though.
So for the time being – let’s wait and see what happens with Flash based sites and the Google Index. If this really does work then we’ll begin to see a bit of a shift in thinking around Flash for some people. In our opinion though it does not affect the usability issues associated with Flash – but it will mean that our banners can now have content that will be indexed!
