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Google to Index Flash Content ... Again
July 01, 2008
In a post last night entitled "Improved Flash Indexing," the Google Webmaster Tools blog reports that
We've improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash "gadgets" such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between. ... In addition to finding and indexing the textual content in Flash files, we're also discovering URLs that appear in Flash files, and feeding them into our crawling pipeline—just like we do with URLs that appear in non-Flash webpages. For example, if your Flash application contains links to pages inside your website, Google may now be better able to discover and crawl more of your website.
This brings up several satellite issues:
- Since it's been so difficult to index Flash content, a virtual cottage industry sprang up with ways to circumvent that disability, including methods like SWFObject, sIFR, user-agent-based delivery of plain text vs. Flash content, and so on. With these techniques becoming more sophisticated and easy to implement, is it likely that sites will abandon them soon?
- It appears that for now, Flash files spawned when users fail a JavaScript test will still be uncrawlable, since engines too typically fail a JS sniffer.
- If you have a SWF file embedded as only a part of a larger HTML page, trust me that you do NOT want only that SWF file being returned in search results. It typically looks awful, lacking both the size requirements you implemented, as well as the critical navigation that resides in your HTML. The Webmaster Central post didn't say that SWF files would be returned in SERPs, so I'm not saying that's what will happen. But I've tested client sites by searching for strings of text that only appear in Flash files, and I've seen it happen. So test with your own site and cross your fingers.
I chose a somewhat sarcastic post title because ever since search engines and Flash have butted heads, the ability for engines to index text embedded in Flash files has been "just around the corner." In 2002, for example, hearts were briefly aflutter about the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK, which was going to be the end of engines' inability to index Flash content. Hear that? The end. 2002.
So I enter into this new era with guarded optimism. Optimistic because Google never releases anything "new" until it's been tested in the wild for months or years. Guarded because the "right" recommendation for clients is never quite as black and white as people think it will be.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at July 1, 2008 09:18 AM
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Comments
Hi Erik,
I fully agree with your skepticism. Adobe have added lots of "hooks" in this new tech, but what Google have chosen to implement seems like a really simple subset of what the software actually allows:
http://www.flashmagazine.com/News/detail/swfs_to_become_fully_searchable/
The most important thing here is obviously the possibility to crawl dynamic content, but if Javascript embedded SWFs are not included, this announcement has very little real value.
J
Posted by: Jensa at July 1, 2008 03:13 PM
interesting post.
Posted by: Sonali Sengupta at July 4, 2008 04:26 AM