One of the problems with using Flash on a website is that search engines like Google and Yahoo are unable to read the content of the files encoded in the Flash file format. This can keep people from using Flash on their sites for obvious reasons. Adobe (developers of Flash technology) knows this, and so to help advance the technologies that they created, they have decided to work with Yahoo and Google so that they will be able to index the information stored in the SWF format.
According to Adobe’s press release, “Adobe is providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines.” If this technology works well enough, that means anybody, even bloggers who rely partly on search engines, should feel confident using Flash because they wouldn’t have to worry about the content of their articles being hidden from search engines.
What this means for people searching for information on the web is that in the future when Yahoo and Google have their Flash reading systems worked out, searchers will have access to all kinds of information that they previously wouldn’t have been able to find. Those who have used Flash on their sites in the past will not need to modify any of their files for Google or Yahoo to be able to search the content, it’ll just work.
Source: Macworld
The next problem they will have to deal with is making the search result jump to the right section in the Flash version of the site. If it just jumps you to the URL, where the content you searched for is not immediately visible before a few clicking actions, that wouldn’t help very much..
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]
Ahhh, that’s a good point. The link that “x” pointed to says that Google will click the buttons and everything just like a regular user would to help them discover all of the text. But you’re right… when a user is taken to the page there’s a good chance that they won’t immediately see the item they were searching for.