Adobe, Google and Yahoo Join Forces To Make Flash More Searchable
Adobe has teamed up with the two biggest names in web search to make Flash content more visible to search engines.
The company announced Tuesday it has been working with Google and Yahoo in recent months to make text, links and other content within files created for its Flash player software more easily indexable. Google is implementing the technology first, rolling it out in stages. The first wave of newly-indexed Flash content should be noticeable by Tuesday morning. The company has also posted an FAQ.
The improvement is the result of efforts by software engineers at both Google and Adobe. Yahoo has pledged to implement its own improved Flash indexing system as well, though the company’s search team didn’t have anything online at the time of the announcement.
Previously, search engines had a hard time peering inside Flash files to accurately read and catalog the content within. This created a barrier for Flash adoption among content producers, many of whom were nervous that search engines wouldn’t be able to see much of what they put inside a Flash movie. Adobe especially is hoping this new agreement will erase that barrier.
In a phone interview with Webmonkey, Adobe director of platform distribution and business development Eric Wittman stressed that this development is arriving at what he feels is just the right time — as Flash developers are creating more complex and content-heavy rich internet applications (RIAs).
“This is an upgrade to what search is about, since it allows people to find relevant content in RIAs,” he says. “We feel this is actually going to change the relevancy of ranking in search.”
To make this work, Adobe is providing Google and Yahoo with an optimized version of Flash Player. For its part, Google is providing a “virtual user” technology — a robot that virtually clicks through each Flash piece it encounters and indexes what’s inside. Google will be driving that application itself, says Wittman.
Content publishers working with Flash won’t have to change anything in their files. All of their Flash applications currently online will be indexed by the new tools. Just text and links will be indexed for now. Images, audio files and movies can’t be as accurately indexed with the current technology, but all parties involved are working at eventually improving it.
Adobe has been approaching each search provider one by one to develop independent solutions, which it feels is better than asking everyone to adopt one blanket technology. This way, each search engine is able to grab and index the information inside Flash files the way it wants to.
