Finally, Adobe has announced that they have been sitting around a table with Google and Yahoo with the aim of “opening” the contents of the Flash SWF files to the public.
The 2 search engines will have the technology of Adobe Flash Player through which they will be able to  access any type of information contained in this file type.

The index of the file contents  in Flash at the moment presents several limitations, including:

1. flash files are seen as elements / distinct pages simply linked to  the page that contains them and are completely independent from the context of the page.

2. links are seen by search engines as simple URLs  and so are not characterized by the anchor text, which is a fundamental parameter for the characterization of the link.

3. the texts are seen as animated images and then ignored by engines

4. Any file loaded onto swf  (html, xml, further swf) can be indexed separately and not necessarily as part of the main swf .

Thanks to Adobe, Google, slightly “ahead” of Yahoo! (or are they?), manages to overcome some of the limits of the past. However, this is only the beginning of a path that, certainly, starting today will be downhill all the way.

Without getting into an analysis of the  improvements already made (available on google webmaster central blog), it is clear that this story is yet another peg, a new battle in the great war between Microsoft and all the others led by Google.

After the advent of SilverLight by Microsoft, the alternative technology to Flash,  Adobe needed a move that was likely to maintain its market share (there are  millions  of flash developed websites on the internet).

Opening up to Google and Yahoo is an attempt to impose on competition. Besides, knowing the current limitations of search engines in the interpretation of dynamic content, which technology would you choose for creating a site?

Diego Borrelli
Seo strategist

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