If you want your site to rank well, don't use Flash! That's been the mantra of many an SEO, but Adobe has been working diligently to eradicate that stigma. And the Web design and tech firm has moved
closer to having search-friendly Flash, announcing that the Googlebot can now "read" Flash files and extract text and links.
So while the images and animation within Flash files are
still non-crawlable, text files like the words-on buttons and URLs will be. Adobe is providing both Google and Yahoo with a special Flash player that will enable them to "introspect and navigate
through a live SWF application as if they were virtual users," though Google is currently the only engine with immediate implementation plans. Yahoo brass said that the Flash-player integration was on
the radar, but gave no timeline (and since they have far bigger concerns, who can blame them?) while Adobe said it plans to work with Microsoft's Live Search on an alternative solution.
"Can SEOs now remove the 'review Flash implementation' line from their checklists? Probably not," says Vanessa Fox. The new system can't pull any meta data from the Flash files, for example, nor
can it interact with Flash files that are served via JavaScript. "However, it should be easier for SEOs to work with Flash-based sites going forward."
Read the whole story at Search Engine Land »