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Google announced on 30 June at WebmasterCentral that they had been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files, integrating the new Adobe SWF technology and are now rolling it out. This includes Flash buttons, menus and full-Flash websites, and URLS contained in Flash content. It does not include images containing text, or FLV files, such as YouTube videos.  However the Google announcement on 30 June included limitations:

1. Google does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
2. Google does not currently attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.
3. There are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages, for example Hebrew or Arabic languages.

Discussions

Feedback from various forums and blogs includes concerns that:

• Flash developers will get even lazier about SEO;- Some Flash sites may see large improvements in their rankings;
• Accessibility will suffer, as designers no longer bother to replace Flash navigation with alternatives;
• Black Hat SEO techniques will flourish, as they hide text in Flash files and create tiny 1 pixel Flash files loaded with links and keywords;
• SEOs will be unable to analyse why a site ranks highly, when the site uses a Flash file containing content that they cannot see;
• What Google will do about duplicate content in HTML sites created for non-Flash users;
• Whether SWFObject , the most commonly used Javascript technique for loading Flash files, will be affected by Google’s inability to execute some types of Javacript;
• Whether alternate text used with SWFObject will be considered duplicate content by Google;
• Whether XML files loaded by Flash, will be excluded, or treated separately, as per the Google limitation above;
• Whether SWF files loaded by small SWF preloaders, will be excluded, or treated separately, as per the Google limitation above;
• How will Google prioritise the content of Flash files. Will it just be one large file of data?
• What about Microsoft and Silverlight?

Making Use of the Announcements

Use deep linking to create direct links to specific parts/states of the Flash application.You can use Adobe Flex components that will update the location bar of a browser window to generate URLs at runtime. The objective is for the search landing page to be exactly at the page/state in the Flash File where the content was found. (A similar flaw with PDF files, where you land at the start of the document.) List the deeplinks in your sitemap XML file.At this stage there are more questions than answers. It will be interesting to see how the rankings for various websites change as the new algorithm rolls out.