Chris Gilmer , Thursday, January 10th, 2008

In recent Flash tests, the team at Mobati has been noticing more and more that Google is reading, and quite frequently indexing Flash based content. This is all thanks to Adobe’s Search Engine SDK technology which makes it easier for search engines to pull the content out of SWF movies with Adobe’s help instead of trying to create an application that does it. What does this mean? Well, Designers and Developers really have to watch out and pay attention how text is layed out and positioned. Not to the same extent as what is done in regular HTML/CSS based layouts, but keep it in mind. Copywriters and Marketing folks, same goes for you.

Does this mean that its suddenly ok to build Flash based websites when the goal is to make them “search friendly?” Not quite, but its well on its way to becoming a reality. Its still best to design the brunt of your website using plain text and insert flash components on the page. Of course it all depends on what your end goal is with the web property.

For some additional reads on Flash and Search, check these sites:

• Improving Search Engine Indexing And Ranking Of Flash Content
• Optimizing Flash for Search Engines
• Search Engine Optimization and Non-HTML Sites
• Search Engine Optimization for Flash Websites. We did it, here’s how
• Google reads Flash text, so optimize it