Fast Unveils Macromedia Flash Searching Capability

[Tor]

FAST is the first major Web search technology provider to offer searching of Macromedia Flash content and applications

[fast.no ]

[lazerzubb]

Wonder how good it will work, especially since it's very hard to read Vector graphic, Google have indexed FLASH since a long time, and you have been able to search trough it, even though you haven't been able to specify that you want Only Flashsites" i think this will be very little used, good if they have found a new way to read Vector Graphic though.

[korkus2000]

I wonder if they incorporated the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK 1.0 [macromedia.com]. If so, then it should work better than googles current abilities.

[lazerzubb]

How do you know that Google isn't using that? ;)

[korkus2000]

I only can say that what it says it will do is better than google's attempt at flash sites last update.

[rmjvol]

Google have indexed FLASH since a long time

I think G has been able to follow links in Flash since October 2001 but not flash content.

See this thread [webmasterworld.com]

rmjvol

[mfagan]

My search yielded 186,130 SWF results, or about 1% of their database.

Google has about 2,350,000 SWF files in their results, but their text is not indexed or searchable.

[Tim]

Korkus-
We have integrated the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK 1.0.

[korkus2000]

Thats excellent news Tim! I can't wait to see it in action.

[seth_wilde]

Tim-

Is this now on by defualt or do you have to choose it in the advanced search options?

[msr986]

What is this?

A voice from FAST?

Hum, I think we need a special thread for SE employee's.

[Tim]

Searching of FLASH is on by default. But you can narrow (or filter) in the advanced search if you feel the need to.

[seth_wilde]

"FLASH is on by default"

Thanks.. That's great news!

"A voice from FAST?"

Yep, Tim's legit.. come on out to the pubcon and you can meet him..

[heini]

So we better start optimizing our flash content!

Seriously though, like flash or not, it's a widespread reality in webpublishing. Good move therefore for a major search engine not only to index this content but make it searchable.

[WebGuerrilla]

>>Yep, Tim's legit..

Yea, but I think he needs to change his nick...

FastGuy sounds kinda cool. :)

[kapow]

> Good move therefore for a major search engine not only to index this content but make it searchable.

When I started out in web design I loved Flash. Then I started learning SEO and I dropped Flash. If Flash searching is effective - it changes everything again.

There is a lot of concern about the horrible download time of many Flash sites (somewhere it says about 90% of people online are not on broadband). Only bad Flash takes an age to download. Done correctly Flash can download faster than many images.

[rankerous]

I don't get what indexing flash will do for relevancy.

Most flash sites are pictures.

I recently had a client who wanted a picture of a home -in flash- on the front page. This is something that only human being's can process cognitivily.

And at that, the message would be fuzzy. What the hell is a picture of a house supposed to mean? Whether it be in flash or just a JPG.?

Sure some pages have flash text on them, but usually the page is more about the graphics than the content. The graphics-be it flash-or gifs, or jpgs, can often take from the message.

[Winooski]

I don't know enough about Flash, so someone set me straight: now that FAST is able to index Flash, will attempts to keyword-stuff Flash files be as "transparent" to SEO experts and SEs, or will it be harder to detect than keyword-stuffing HTML files?

[korkus2000]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld rankerous,

Go to macromedia's page [macromedia.com] to see what indexing flash means. It is for the links and the text. It doesn't care about the pictures. If a site is only pictures then it is DOA. Most all flash sites contain flash text and links. Until now spiders could only see the links (mainly Google).

Winooski -
The way I understand it keyword stuffing and other tricks will be about the same as regular html. There maybe new spam techniques that are uncovered by flash being indexed, but it is really too early to tell.

[webgeneral]

How is Flash being indexed, I have read on Pandia.com that although "Google has included Flash files in its index. Google has, however, not indexed the textual content of these pages", does this mean that FAST is now indexing the textual content of the flash page or just indexing the flash site? If it is indexing the text content or do they just mean FAST is now able to follow Flash embedded links.

[korkus2000]

webgeneral -
Fast is now indexing Flash text and following links. Google at the moment is only following Flash links. Thats what makes this such big news.

[Allergic]

I was very septical about this new feature. But this is true... ATW can find a string and a link in a swf ! Search for "lisfa liu sing" and you get a link to a swf file... The only problem is... like frame site and OO prog you'll get only the result file ;-) The Flash programmer will have to build a few reconstruction set to their site.

[indigojo]

>>Yep, Tim's legit..
Yea, but I think he needs to change his nick...
FastGuy sounds kinda cool.

so theres a googleguy, a fastguy maybe soon even a wiseguy

[GoogleGuy]

indigojo, I think we already have some wiseguys around here. :)