Dynamic Flash May Be Searchable Now but What Impact Will it Have?

I was reading wired.com today when I stumbled upon this article featured on the new webmonkey about how starting today dynamic flash documents would start showing up in Google’s index. Apparently Adobe has supplied Google with a special searchable SWF library that will allow it to do so. According to the original press release, Yahoo! is also working with Adobe to achieve similar results. For the most part I have decided that this is a generally positive move for the technology, however I wonder what impact this improved search functionality will have?

On one side of the spectrum this advancement in technology could have little to no effect (which I will explain below) or it could be a major disruptor in terms of established “rules” of web design. Most likely it will fall somewhere near the middle, however I believe skewed towards the no effect column.

Reasons that this could make a huge impact

The obvious reason is that designers / developers should being more receptive to utilizing flash due to the decreased drawbacks. However, the fact that current applications do not need to do anything to reap the benefits of the new technology mean that it has the potential to drastically change what is considered relevant by Google’s algorithms. The main factor that will determine how much of an impact this ultimately makes is how effective Google’s algorithms really are.

Why it is more likely nothing major will happen

After contemplating the possible outcomes of this technology for some time I have come up with two different reasons I feel that this will not make a substantial impact.

While flash may be indexed more effectively accessibility is still an issue.

Markets that demand extremely accessible sites will still avoid flash because of the limitations imposed by screen reader technology and usability issues.

There currently are three limitations, two of which are fundamental to its success.

According to the Google webmaster blog the new search technology suffers from the following three limitations:

1. Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
2. We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.
3. While we are able to index Flash in almost all of the languages found on the web, currently there are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages. Until this is fixed, we will be unable to index Hebrew language or Arabic language content from Flash files.

Numbers 1 and 2 will obviously have the most impact. It has pretty much become commonplace that developers load SWF files in order to avoid having to first click an embedded SWF file to use it. If Google would like the new technology to be effective it is imperative that they overcome this limitation and soon.

The second limitation is where Google’s claim that designers and developers do not need to change their files becomes weak. While it may not be necessary to make changes to see some benefit, it would be in ones interest to avoid creating their files with these methods in order to achieve the best possible results. I won’t get into the details as to why this is harder than it may seem, however building flash documents in this manner has benefits that may make it impossible or at least insanely inconvenient to do.

MY PERSONAL CONCLUSION

For the time being I will continue to utilize flash in the way that I have in the past, choosing to use flash when its benefits outweigh its negatives. For the time being I find it hard to believe that this technology will make a huge impact in the face of the web as we know it. As always I am open to your opinion, if you have something you would like to add or think I am completely off the mark please let me know in the comments below.