Sunday, March 29, 2009

Google Is Making Progress With Flash

We're asked the question about Google's Flash indexing capabilities so frequently, we think it deserves a post.

At present, there are three main limitations that Google is working to resolve.

1. Googlebot 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 currently does not 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. While Google is able to index Flash in almost all of the languages found on the web, currently there are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages. Until this is fixed, Google will be unable to index Hebrew language or Arabic language content from Flash files.

Google is already making progress on these issues, so stay tuned!