Google learns to crawl Flash
Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we've improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google had already experimented with a Flash-based interface in SearchMash's Flash presentation. The Adobe integration moves that capability from a product interface experiment toward indexing text embedded across Flash menus, buttons, banners and full sites.
First-order effects
- Text embedded in Flash files becomes eligible for Google indexing, giving Flash publishers a route for previously hard-to-discover on-page text.
- Adobe's Flash Player technology becomes part of Google's indexing workflow, making the player relevant to how Flash content is interpreted for search.
Second-order effects
- Flash site owners can compete for search visibility on the basis of text inside their existing interactive assets rather than treating Flash presentation as wholly separate from search discovery.
- Google's richer-content crawling raises the value of publishing machine-readable text within interactive experiences, while Adobe gains a search-accessibility argument for Flash-based publishing.
Third-order effects
- If search engines continue extending crawlers beyond HTML, web distribution will increasingly favor formats whose embedded content can be parsed and ranked rather than merely rendered.
- The move points to search indexing becoming a capability negotiated across browser, player and content-platform technologies, not solely a function of page markup.
The trend: Search engines are expanding from document retrieval toward extracting searchable text from richer web application formats.