Search engine’s visibility of Flash content has come along way. Just when many individuals were ready to give up on the Flash platform due to its lack of “visibility” in search engines. The day has come for Google’s vision of Flash content to appear much more clearer.
Jim Corbet, a member of the Flash Player team, spoke recently at this year’s Adobe Max conference. He spoke on the long awaited visibility of Flash content in popular search engines like Google. You can check out Jim’s presentation below as he goes into great detail on how this actually works and what it will mean for all of us.
Image of Analytics Flash Visual Component in Flash CS3 via Google
If you’ve ever wanted to track your Flash content over the web, then you’d know what a challenge this task entails. In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be customized.
It is now safe to say that tracking your Flash content, has gotten much easier and more accurate. With the assistance of Adobe and other third party developers, the Google Analytics team has developed and released Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash.
What is Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash?
This new Flash tracking code offers all the rich features of the current JavaScript-based version as it translates the current Google Analytics tracking code into the ActionScript 3 programming language that dramatically simplifies the ability to track your Flash, Flex and AS3 content.
Earlier this week, Google released a Google Earth plug-in which will let developers make Google Earth 3D applications run within the browser. This is huge for Google and the industry, however, as of today, it hasn’t been added to the Google Maps Flash API. I am sure in due time we shall receive that wish, but until then I would highly recommend toying around with it as it is available in the JavaScript version of the API.
Until now Google Maps via the Flash platform hasn’t been available unless you’ve been using the the UMAP component from AFComponents. As you may have heard, Google has opened up its API to the Flash and Flex community. This is huge as it offers more possibilities for Rich Interactive Applications and Google Maps. To find more info on Google Maps for Flash, check out Google’s official blog.
Check out the these examples using the new Google Maps for Flash API:
Video Sync Map
A map pans and updates while a synchronized video shows footage from the city highlighted on the map.
Photo Flip Map
Locations in Las Vegas are plotted on the map with a small photo showing up inline; the view can be “flipped” to show a larger photo without the map.
Local Searcher
Displays a Flex UI with ComboBox, Button, and TextField that are used to perform a local search with the AJAX Local Search API.
Custom Campus Map
Creates a custom map by extending TileLayerBase to load in USC image tiles.
Form Geocoding
Shows how to take a user-entered address from a Flex TextField, geocode it, and display the result as a map marker.
Control Options
Shows how to customize the display of MapTypeControl and OverviewMapControl using their associated options classes.
In the past, it has been difficult to effectively get Flash content indexed and ranked by search engines. Search engines, such as Yahoo and Google, did not spider Flash content as they could not read the compressed file and much of the text inside the SWF appeared as graphics to the search engines.
Macromedia(Adobe) knew that this has prohibited many individuals to use Flash as their source of content. Everyone wants to get properly indexed and ranked with the best of them. That is why they have released the Flash Search Engine SDK.
What is the Flash Search Engine SDK?
The Flash Search Engine SDK is designed for search engine application engineering teams. Users of the SDK can add Flash file decompression, parsing, and indexing features to their server-based search applications. It is available for free download for the Mac and Windows platform.
How Does It Work?
The SDK includes an application named ‘swf2html’. Swf2html extracts text and links from a Flash .SWF file, and returns the data as an HTML document. Swf2html is provided as a compiled application, and as a static library for linked library implementation. More info available with the Flash Search Engine SDK download.
If you’re a Flash developer or user and serious about getting indexed and ranked, I would definitely recommend checking this SDK out.
Here are a few other articles that go farther into depth with SEO within Flash:
Take a look at how Advanced Flash Components, also known as AFC, has tightly integrated the Google Maps API into an Adobe Flash environment. This wonderful piece of work is called UMap.
UMap , previously known as G Map, is the Universal ActionScript 3.0 Mapping API integrated with Google Maps. The scalable component model allows you to create rich maps with interactive data layers. This flexible API enables developers to build fully-customized solutions.
Support for custom map tiles and providers
Updated loading algorithms for faster tile loading
