Google gets to grip with Flash files

Google has enhanced its search engine's capacity to index Adobe's Flash files, which are very popular on the web but tricky for search engine spiders.

The company's search engine can now index external content that a Flash file loads, such as text, HTML, XML or Flash content itself. It will also tie the indexed Flash file to this externally loaded content and the documents from where it comes, Google said.

"This new capability improves search quality by allowing relevant content contained in external resources to appear in response to users' queries," wrote Google software engineer Janis Stipins in an official blog.

Friday's announcement is the latest in Google's multiyear effort to improve its indexing of Flash files and specifically builds on the announcement in June of last year that Google had developed a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files.

At the time, Adobe also announced it was providing optimised Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo to help with their ongoing efforts to better index Flash files.

Improvements to index Flash by Google, Yahoo and others benefit not only the search engines and their end users but also webmasters and designers, who have struggled to have the Flash portions of their sites indexed and made searchable.