In brief...: New Flash search tool

Jul 11 2008

Internet users will now have an easier time finding sites that rely heavily on the Flash video format.

Adobe, the format's developer, has released a customised version of its Flash Player software that allows Google's search engine and others to see the elements of web pages embedded with Flash content.

Search crawlers, the programmes that find and index content for search engines, currently have a difficult time "seeing" non-text formats.

The new tools help search crawlers navigate dynamic Flash pages easily.

Google's crawlers, for instance, will beable to click buttons along the way and remember the information for the index.