So the big news in the Flash development world is Google's latest announcement that they have improved their indexing of Adobe Flash files. But what exactly does this mean to developers?

Google has been indexing Flash since 2004

Well, the news isn't exactly as groundbreaking as some first thought. For starters, Google has already been indexing flash files since 2004. Google's spiders have been able to view any static text information since shortly after Macromedia released their Flash Search Engine SDK. The difference with this latest update is that Google's mystical little crawlers can now access dynamic text as well as recognize URLs in that text.

Because it deals with their algorithms, Google is very close mouthed about the specifics of this change. But of the three technical limitations they (Ron Adler, Janis Stipins, and Maile Ohye) cite, two of them stand out conspicuously.

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.

No JavaScript?

The first isn't too bad at first blush, but it raises quite a few questions. Best practices for embedding Flash has involved the use of JavaScript for years now. Most developers use scripts like SWFObject to do the dirty work and take care of IE's old problem with Eolas and the ActiveX warning. So does using this method cancel out Google's new ability? Or would a simple noscript tag be good enough for their bots? And what about libraries like SWFAddress? Which would you choose between, having Flash indexed in this new way, or deep linking, bookmarking, and analytical functionality?

Dynamic without being flexible

The second caveat is much bigger and makes the new indexing possibly pointless, some would say worse than pointless. What is the point of dynamic text if you can't load dynamic data? And does "external sources" cover Json and other text files? How about Remote Objects? Google simply doesn't tell us enough.

What's more, as some of the anti-Flash crowd (I'm looking at you Reddit) have pointed out, is that this might encourage old, bad habits. If keeping your data separate from your presentation loses out to SEO, than the myth that Flash pieces aren't maintainable starts to become true.

And then there's this point:

At present, we are only discovering and indexing textual content in Flash files. If your Flash files only include images, we will not recognize or index any text that may appear in those images. Similarly, we do not generate any anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text.

So does this mean that URLs appearing within the Flash are only indexable if they are spelled out explicitly, or that they need to be labelled? Once again, we simply don't have enough information.

A step towards a more open Flash player

But for me, whether this proves to be a boon or a bust, the big news isn't Google's update, but the change at Adobe that instigated it. In yet another step that may eventually lead down the garden path of an open source Flash player, Adobe opened up the player up to Google and Yahoo in order to facilitate this change.

Adobe has provided Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! that allows their search spiders to navigate through a live SWF application as if they were virtual users. The Flash Player technology, optimized for search spiders, runs a SWF file similarly to how the file would run in Adobe Flash Player in the browser, yet it returns all of the text and links that occur at any state of the application back to the search spider, which then appears in search results to the end user.

More to come

And here's the kicker. This is just the start:

We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers, and end users.

I'm not sure how far behind the curtain Adobe will eventually let us look, but they're not through just yet. Until they do, we're very much in the dark regarding the specifics of Flash's new searchability. If I can find the time, I intend on doing a little experimenting to try and fill in some of the blanks that Google left out. I'll post my results if I do.

But what does this mean for marketers

The jury is still out on exactly how this affects web strategy. There's simply not enough information available to make a judgement call. In the meantime, Flash implementations that were a bad idea yesterday because of SEO, should still be treated like a bad idea today.