Google gets Flash-savvy

Flash used to be the black hole of the Web, but no longer, according to Adobe and Google. The companies have worked together to enable Google to better index Flash content to make it searchable. Philipp Jenssen on Blogoscope cites a Q&A on Google's Webmaster Central and includes a good rundown of the improvements--and limitations--to Google's new Flash capabilities. Before, Google's crawlers couldn't see all the text associated with Flash content, but now they not only can see it but remember all of the text they encounter on the site. This means words that appear in Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches. He also cites some limitations, including Google's inability to search images or to recognize Flash content loaded by JavaScript. Plus, he includes a neat tip for checking the Google-readiness or your own site's Flash content.

This is not only good news for Flash-heavy sites, which have always struggled with search engine recognition, but it also shows Google working nicely with Flash-maker Adobe. What's more interesting is that the announcement on Adobe's site included the fact that Yahoo search should have the same Flash-savviness soon, but made no mention of Microsoft. Perhaps the Google Gears, Silverlight, Flash-AIR wars are starting to heat up a bit?