Great news for Flash web designers and SEOs dealing with Flash websites! Adobe announced today that it has developed a new technology that will make it possible for search engines to index the content of SWF files (links, static content, dynamic content and rich internet applications). The technology will soon be available for Google and Yahoo. Read more in their press release: Adobe Flash Technology Enhances Search Results for Dynamic Content and Rich Internet Applications.
Flash developers gonna love it. It may have to evolve to be as effective as like non-flash sites; but thats a start.
I think it is great but sounds like you still can't directly link within the Flash. According to the press release no changes need to be made to an existing flash site. Google is already using the flash search algorithm but Yahoo won't until a later update of its search.
I must say that they took a long time to do this, they should have done this before when people giving much attention in on page optimization.
For a long time site developers had to weigh the pros and cons of having a site that is indexable and a site with me really nice Flash interface. This will allow many site owners to have their cake and eat it too.
Although this certainly is good news to flash web designers, the indexing capability still has its limitations, since several file types can still not be indexed. I have no doubt that this issue will be resolved in the next year or so. There's an extensive article on Search Engine Land about Google indexing Flash files. I wonder what effect this will have on spammy websites and emails that use Flash content? The technology will probably develop rapidly so that after a few years email spam filters can detect such emails.