Adobe Teams with Google and Yahoo for Flash Search

Posted by Vaibhav

July 5, 2008

Adobe Systems has announced a new initiative with two internet giants Google and Yahoo to enhance search for rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and dynamic Web content. Adobe will supply optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to refine Flash file format indexing and reveal information which is currently out of the reach of the search engines.

According to companies, this feature will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of a number of RIAs and other dynamic content that appear in Adobe Flash Player. This means that Web-content producers and RIA developers would not require altering their content to make it searchable.

General Manager and VP of the platform business unit at Adobe, David Wadhwani said that the company is leading the charge in enhancing search of content that works in Adobe Flash Player because so far, it has been very challenging to search millions of RIAs and dynamic content over the Web.

Getting Acquainted with the Flash Challenge

The SWF format used to provide rich applications and interactive content in Adobe Flash Player is installed on above 98% of Internet connected PCs, as described by an openly published specification.

Despite static text and links within these files are already indexed by search engines, dynamic Web content and RIAs have been rather difficult to be indexed due to their changing states. This problem is also found in other RIA technologies.

Wadhwani said that initially, Adobe is working with the two popular search engines, and also plans to widen its effort to benefit every content publisher, developer and end user.

Improved Indexing

The online search leader Google has already started to utilize Adobe Flash Player technology in its search engine. Therefore, millions of existing dynamic Web content and RIAs that use Adobe Flash are searchable without any changes.

Senior VP of engineering at Google Bill Coughran said that Google has been putting in a lot of efforts to enhance reading and discovering of SWF files. He added that this recent collaboration will help the company to assist website owners who opt to design sites with Adobe Flash software by indexing such content better.

Besides Google, archrival Yahoo also anticipates to provide enhanced capabilities for SWF applications in an update to Yahoo Search. A Yahoo VP, Sean Suchter said that the company is committed to supporting Webmasters requirements with plans to support searchable SWF and is teaming with Adobe to find out the best possible implementation.

Lessening Frustrations

As per the editor of SearchEngineLand.com Danny Sullivan, Web developers and Designers have been frustrated for long as search engines were unable to access the Flash technology generated information.

He expressed delight over Adobe and the search engines partnership in improving the situation and said that the changes should now help uncover information that’s been invisible previously and will possibly result in a better searcher experience.

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