Google to improve indexing of Flash/SWF files

Terri Wells at SEOChat goes quite indepth into Google’s announcement that it will be able to index Flash files a lot more:

Late in June Google and Adobe announced an arrangement whereby the search engine could now read and index Shockwave Flash files. The move has been hailed as a huge step forward, since Flash has up until now been invisible to the search engines – and therefore invisible to searchers. But this isn’t quite the panacea it appears to be.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. Is this just a move by Google and Adobe to sidestep Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology? More importantly, is there enough good quality content in Flash to justify it? Therein lies the rub. Flash is an often used and abused technology when it comes to *information* delivery on the web. Sure it has its uses, nothing can come close to it when it requires a high delivery of interactivity (see YouTube, or one of the millions of games that employ flash).

But for a large part, it’s often used for less than ideal purposes. One of the more positive aspects of SEO is that it has always encouraged quality content (unless you count the black hats, but that’s another story) over useless “animation” and other visual gimmicks. Over time, the use of Flash has actually improved due to its lack of acceptance by the major search engines. This has lead - in my opinion - to a much improved utilization of Flash. If Flash technology suddenly becomes the new way to garner the search engines, then will we see a re-introduction of crappy intro pages and useless animations? Probably not. Let’s hope so anyway.