Google and Flash - Friends Forever?

Just in case you missed the news on Tuesday, Adobe, Google and Yahoo announced that Flash files will have the ability to be higher ranked in search engines, due to a new technology that will aid search engine results. Rockland Web Design is very happy to hear this news.

So why does this matter to you?

To fully explain, let's talk about how Google and Yahoo work for a moment. When you go to one of these search engines and type in...say "Sneakers", the search engine will find websites that are:

• Popular (Lots of other websites link to them)
• Have lots of content
• Are closely related to the search that the visitor seeks
  

There's a lot of other factors, but we'll stick with these for a moment. Those of you who know the whole copy and paste routine can relate to this next question...think about how easy it is to highlight text, and place it in memory to move somewhere else. When this happens, the computer remembers the text and waits for further instructions.

However it is much more difficult to copy...say just a small part of a picture, or worse yet - an animation. Translate this over to Google / Yahoo, and you realize that it is very difficult to "rank" an animation - which is one of the strengths of using Flash. How can you rank the usefulness of a picture of a moving sneaker over that of a web page that says "We sell moving sneakers"?

Long story short, now Google and Yahoo will be able to rank animated Flash files, based on the content that they bring up on the screen. So if Nike, for example created a Flash animation of running sneakers (I know I'm wearing this analogy out), that might now sit right next to the text of running sneakers, rather than be buried on page 10 of the rankings.

So why do you care? Remember the jump from radio to television back in the stone age? This announcement can very well do the same thing for the evolution of the Internet, as you will not need to read through tons and tons of text to find what you want. More companies, including Rockland Web Design, will be charged with the task of creating animated and interactive Internet content. It will further increase the likeliness of the Internet's use as both an entertaining and informative medium for people to increase their knowledge about any subject under the sun.

Thomas Ossa
Rockland Web Design
62 East Main Street
Stony Point, NY 10980
(845) 271 - 4488