There were times when search engine optimizers were completely against Flash based websites and suggested the webmasters to not have flash based content on their websites. However, after Google made changes in how its bots dealt with flash content, we can be rest assured that we’d see more use of flash in blogs or website designs!
Last year around this time, Google learnt the skill of indexing flash based content and since then have updated the robots to index the SWF files in even better way. As of now, Google can even index embedded content in the flash files and associate it with the parent SWF file and any documents that embed it.
Right now, Google’s bot can handle the flash files in the following ways -
1. Index textual content displayed as a user interacts with the file. We click buttons and enter input, just like a user would.
2. Discover links within Flash files.
3. Load external resources and associate the content with the parent file.
4. Support common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, such as SWFObject and SWFObject2.
5. Index sites scripted with AS1, AS2 & AS3, even if the ActionScript is obfuscated.
This is definitely a good news as not only this will make the sites beautiful, use of flash will also help in making them interactive. Although there is one question that comes in mind – “will this change bring any effect on Microsoft?” (SilverLight, MS Office may feel the effect in near future! Jeez, I should stop thinking too much about competition :P)
