Adobe Systems is reportedly providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Google (News - Alert) and Yahoo! The alliance aims to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines.

 

The companies believe that the technology will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player. In the future, both RIA developers and rich Web content producers will not need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable. Thanks to Adobe, they can now be assured it can be found by users around the globe.

 

David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe pointed out that until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so they are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player.

 

Adobe is initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web and they intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.

 

According to Adobe Systems (News - Alert) company officials, Google is currently rolling out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine. Thanks to Adobe, Google is able to better read the content on sites that use Adobe Flash technology. This helps users to find more relevant information when conducting searches.

 

Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering at Google, said that they have been working hard to improve how they can read and discover SWF files. Through their recent collaboration with Adobe, Google can now help Web site owners that choose to design sites with Adobe Flash software by indexing this content better. He added that improving how they crawl dynamic content will ultimately enhance the search experience for their users.

 

According to Sean Suchter, vice president Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering, Yahoo! also expects to deliver improved Web search capabilities for SWF applications in a future update to Yahoo! Search. He said that Yahoo! is committed to supporting Webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation.

 

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief, SearchEngineLand.com, explained that designers and Web developers have long been frustrated that search engines couldn’t better access the information within their content created with Flash technology. He finds it great to see Adobe and the search engines working directly together to improve the situation.

 

Sullivan believes the changes should help unlock information that’s previously been ‘invisible’ and will likely result in a better experience for searchers.