The technology from Adobe lets Google and Yahoo index the textual content and links in Flash files. What does this mean as far as images? “If your Flash files only include images, we will not recognize or index any text that may appear in those images,” Google explained. “Similarly, we do not generate any anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text.”
If you guessed that Google and Yahoo also can't index video with Adobe's technology, because they can't index images, give yourself a gold star. Google explicitly states that they do not index FLV files “such as the videos that play on YouTube,” because these files don't contain any text elements. While I'm reassured as a writer and an editor to know that text won't be going obsolete on the web any time soon, it does mean that any ideas of doing an all-video web site need a serious rethink (so much for my dreams of an “Editors Gone Wild” site).
You're probably aware that Google and other search engines have problems when confronted with JavaScript. If your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, it's quite possible that Google won't see it – in which case, it won't be indexed. So you're back to square one there.
Okay, let's assume that the JavaScript issue is not a problem for you. But you have your Flash set up so that it loads files from external resources. That's not a problem, right? After all, Google can read HTML, XML, and certain other kinds of files, so it shouldn't have any problem reading these files – or so you'd think. Yes, Google can index those files, but it does so separately. It doesn't yet know how to relate it to the Flash file, so it won't be considered to be part of the same content. That's really important if those files contain keywords or other content that you're trying to use to optimize that particular Flash file!
There's one more issue of particular concern to those who feature content on their site that is not in English. I'm going to quote directly from Google's press release, because this is something I wouldn't want to see anyone misconstrue. “While we are able to index Flash in almost all of the languages found on the web, currently there are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages. Until this is fixed, we will be unable to index Hebrew language or Arabic language content from Flash files.”
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