Google admits they can read Flash Animations

Matt Cutts admitted last month that Google has begun using the Adobe's Flash search devkit, a product Adobe provided to search engines to help them read Flash animations. Since they also make Flash, it behooves them to provide another reason for developers to use Flash, of course. And it is nice to know that Google has been working actively to incorporate information in Flash into their results, seeing as how Flash is so much prettier than just text. From a search standpoint, however, Flash has traditionally been a dead zone. A search spider breezing across an .swf file just sees a mention that it exists. The animation we have at the top of our page could say "Arizona Internet Marketing Firms" until the cows came home, and Google wouldn't know anything about it. When you design a web page completely in Flash, it's even worse. Try explaining to someone that, while their very expensive site redesign really is very cool looking, it won't show up in Google. If you do, bring a hanky. So hopefully, this won't be true too much longer. If Google can finally find a way to read what is in an .swf Flash animation without having to load it, then the economics will allow more sites to use it. Because there really isn't too much you can say about how much better things look in Flash.