Adobe boosts Flash media search with Google and Yahoo! Adobe Systems is working with Google and Yahoo! to improve the accuracy of searches for Flash ads and media by delivering an optimized version of its ubiquitous player. Google is today expected to start offering searches of media content using a version of the player that'll help search engines index content using Adobe's …
This is good news for everyone who has to visit "designer" sites where all the content sits in a Flash object with stupid piddly custom scrollbars (mouse over the arrow to scroll... slooooowly... doooowwn...) and absolutely no text/html alternative.
At least this way we can know in advance that the text we're looking for is actually in there before loading the buggers. (And if the search engine allows you to preview enough of it, you might not need to load the .SWF at all...)
I don't understand Mr Wittman's comment... why would anyone want to search *for* ads - and surely the ads on Google will remain text-based (which is nothing to do with searching *for* ads anyway, since the sidebar ads use keywords rather than the ad text itself...)
But for the simple fact that yet another non-text-based format can now be indexed, this is a step forward and I applaud Adobe for taking it.
Flash ads on search results pages would be a massive about turn for a company that built it's brand on low key, simply presented information rather than the flash bang in your face portals of old.
Even if integrated into the text results, the odds of a flash ad being what the majority wanted/expected from a search are surely as close to nil as makes no difference.
Is this another indicator that Advertising 2.0's wheels are coming off? or are they simply counting on us being too lazy to find a better search engine?
...is for Flash player to stop being an utterly pish piece of software and we're laughing. In particular I love the way you go to sites and they won't let you proceed without installing Flash, so you go to the Flash site and install it and see the test Flash content, only to go back to the web site and be told to install Flash again ad nauseum ad infinitum. Just imagine that happening every time you go to do a search on Google. What joy.
How does this fit into Google's pagerank system? Surely flash SWFs are not directly linked to? It is the encapsulating HTML that holds the embedded SWF that is linked to...why is a special search tool needed for that? Also, can't Google search the SWF metadata instead of needing a special search tool? I suppose I'm still a bit confused for the need of such a thing.
...is for Flash player to stop being an utterly pathetic piece of software and we're laughing. In particular I love the way you go to sites and they won't let you proceed without installing Flash, so you go to the Flash site and install it and see the test Flash content, only to go back to the web site and be told to install Flash again ad nauseum ad infinitum. Just imagine that happening every time you go to do a search on Google. What joy.
Folks largely use Flash when they want lots of pointless spiffy graphics and images. Exactly what's going to be searchable in that kind of content? And, more importantly, why would I (a user, not an advertiser) want Flash-based results if I could get whatever I was looking for in a low-bandwidth low-hassle quick-delivery mostly-text webpage which I can even use on my phone/PDA as well as my PC?
And if I was an advertiser, why would I want to pay some stupid agency loadsamoney to create me a Flash-based white elephant which looked, well, flash, in the office but was largely useless (or worse, totally irritating) to anyone in the real world?
Advertisers, wake up. There's a reason Google Ads are still text-only, and it's NOT because there's no Flash searching yet. Any Yahoo or MSN user knows this!
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
