New deal makes “invisible” Flash content visible to search

June 30, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments |

Adobe, Google and Yahoo are about to make it easier to build rich multimedia websites in the Flash file format (SWF) without sacrificing any “Google juice” (and, um, whatever the Yahoo equivalent is). Both search engines have been developing ways to fully index Flash content without requiring any extra effort from a website owner.

Previously, search engines indexed the “static” text and links on a site, falling far short of capturing all the content.

“It’s like reading the index of a book, rather than the book itself,” says Justin Everett-Church, a senior product manager for Flash.

Now, Google and Yahoo will read the whole darn book — namely, they’ll use web crawlers to play through all of a Flash website’s possible “states,” and make that content available through their search results. The previous “invisibility” of much Flash content to search engines has been a complaint from Flash developers and site owners, Everett-Church says.

Bill Hunt of advertising company Ogilvy tells me this move will particularly benefit “big brand” companies like jewelery maker Tiffany & Co., which has built a fancy shopping website in Flash. Until now, much of the site’s content, such as individual product pages, was invisible to search engines — they could only be seen by navigating the site itself, and wouldn’t turn up in Google searches. For example, it’s less-than-ideal that the top Google result when you search for “Tiffany gold ring” is overstockjeweler.com, rather than the Tiffany website.

This may be an even more significant announcement for businesses that have considered building Flash websites, but didn’t want to sacrifice their search rankings — now, if Google and Yahoo live up to their promises, no one will have to make that choice, removing one of Flash’s big drawbacks.

Everett-Church says that Google has already started tweaking its search results, while Yahoo’s development is a little further behind. Both companies are seriously pursuing this integration, he says, but I can’t help noticing that for now, this is yet another advantage that Google has over Yahoo. It’s hardly a huge setback, but it’s not like Yahoo has much ground left to lose.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Jojo
    I only hope this doesn't further encourage web designers to create more Flash web sites. I have nothing against Flash when used for video's and such but web sites shouldn't be designed in Flash. Such sites are a pain in the arse to use.
  • Flash websites aren't my favorite thing ever, but I think they are appropriate for certain kinds of sites -- if a big Hollywood blockbuster doesn't have an overwhelming Flash website, I kinda wonder if something is wrong. If it makes you feel any better, to the best of my knowledge VentureBeat won't be switching to Flash anytime soon ...
  • ryanmacventurebeat
    Regarding this comment..."I only hope this doesn't further encourage web designers to create more Flash web sites".

    Do you think yahoo and google would take time to invest in it if it wasn't 100% scalable?

    Old school developers-Guys...please wake up, and wake up fast. Flash/Flex/Air/SWF has come a very long way since the days of pretty pictures and non usability issues. It has made a lot of ground over the last few years, and comments like this are becoming less accurate each day.

    It is only a matter of time my friends until we are all developing fully indexed RIA's. Embrace the change. Do your homework.
  • Jojo
    I'll have to disagree with you Ryan. When I say Flash sites are a pain to use, what I mean is that the right-click menu doesn't work and you can't copy anything directly. You can't link to specific pages, things like the back button don't work and text sizes aren't adjustable, etc. etc. Flash sites are usually designed for the visual eye-candy and not for ease of the user. Want an example? How about http://www.fxnetworks.com/?

    I wanted to make some comments on the 30 Days show, so joined their community. What a pain to use (as it is designed in Flash). You had to open a new page to see any comment thread and the thread was only for the OP. Want to see what the next person thought. Then you have to back up to the main index and select the next one. THAT is poor navigation design! I dumped the attempt and sent a complaint note to F/X after wasting 20 minutes of my time messing around with their site. Of course, I did not receive a reply in return.

    And unfortunately, there are many more Flash designed sites that are similar.

    It will be nice that Google/Yahoo will be able to produce search results for Flash sites though. A couple of years back, I brought a detailed book on stretching that was supposedly out-of-print. I searched the web and the cheapest version I could find was for nearly $100 and there were only about 3 hits. But I just had to have this book, so I paid up! Later on, I somehow discovered another site that was selling the same book for $40 (and they had 30+ copies in stock). Why couldn't I find the site originally? Because the site was designed in Flash! Wonder how many sales they have lost over time (not only for this product but for their whole portfolio)?
  • sounds good
  • Is this enough? Indexing the content is a good step. But unless it's accessible via direct linking, then people will have to wander around trying to find the content the search engine showed to them.

    Google is notorious among webmasters for penalizing anything that leads to a bad search experience, so unless Adobe has also solved the linking problem, then there may be little practical benefit for people developing in Flash.
  • If my memory serves me right, there is a way to get flash to render text which appeared as HTML, so that designers were not limited to web-friendly fonts.
  • Jojo
    This post has been awaiting review for a full day, so I am reposting it.

    I'll have to disagree with you Ryan. When I say Flash sites are a pain to use, what I mean is that the right-click menu doesn't work and you can't copy anything directly. You can't link to specific pages, things like the back button don't work and text sizes aren't adjustable, etc. etc. Flash sites are usually designed for the visual eye-candy and not for ease of the user. Want an example? How about (www.fxnetworks.com)

    I wanted to make some comments on the 30 Days show, so joined their community. What a pain to use (as it is designed in Flash). You had to open a new page to see any comment thread and the thread was only for the OP. Want to see what the next person thought. Then you have to back up to the main index and select the next one. THAT is poor navigation design! I dumped the attempt and sent a complaint note to F/X after wasting 20 minutes of my time messing around with their site. Of course, I did not receive a reply in return.

    And unfortunately, there are many more Flash designed sites that are similar.

    It will be nice that Google/Yahoo will be able to produce search results for Flash sites though. A couple of years back, I brought a detailed book on stretching that was supposedly out-of-print. I searched the web and the cheapest version I could find was for nearly $100 and there were only about 3 hits. But I just had to have this book, so I paid up! Later on, I somehow discovered another site that was selling the same book for $40 (and they had 30+ copies in stock). Why couldn't I find the site originally? Because the site was designed in Flash! Wonder how many sales they have lost over time (not only for this product but for their whole portfolio)?
  • good..I think
  • Sounds good and interesting!
  • If my memory serves me right, there is a way to get flash to render text which appeared as HTML, so that designers were not limited to web-friendly fonts.
  • Roberto
    For yahoo status scan and detect i use http://www.statusdetect.com . It's the best yahoo invisible checker!And it has a new feature! It shows you if entered yahoo does not exist.
  • where is my message ?really spoiling
  • This will lead to a wave of would be flash designers creating over complex and usability nightmarish websites. You also need to step back and think a bit, Google isn't the only search engine out there.
  • I strongly recommend against this, you'll be cutting off all the other search engines and unless you know what your doing, you will create usability nightmares like Peter said. Flash is more UI design than webdesign, and more considerations need to be made regarding how it performs on the users pc.
  • Agreed, its silly to implement all flash just because it looks "cool". You can make a site look good by learning some advanced css and html techniques. Flash should only be used if its absolutely necessary, such as displaying videos etc.
  • seo
    Flash can be much more user friendly than traditional web media, but it takes a lot of skill to make it solid. More often than not an individual will want to make their new site from pure flash and it ends up being a bug ridden mess.
  • I really don't like flash based website :(
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