Google learns to crawl Flash?

According to Google, they have been developing “a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.”

They explain further: “We’ve developed an algorithm that explores Flash files in the same way that a person would, by clicking buttons, entering input, and so on. Our algorithm remembers all of the text that it encounters along the way and that content is then available to be indexed. We can’t tell you all of the proprietary details, but we can tell you that the algorithm’s effectiveness was improved by utilising Adobe’s new Searchable SWF library.”

However, no matter what they say, I’ve yet to see Flash sites or SWF content of any kind being indexed in my many searches I do through Google on a daily basis. So, for now, I’m not getting excited about this announcement until I see it working for myself, de facto. I would be interested if anyone reading this has had SWF content indexed in any of their Google searches …

All the same though, it is nice to know that they are putting effort into overcoming a huge deterrent to Flash development. So I wait (or rather, search) in hope everyday to see some of these new algorithms actually producing results.

Click here to find out more about this new(ish?) indexing algorithm straight from the horses mouth.