Flash and SEO (search engine optimization) solutions have lived poles apart for as long as either one of them was invented. Several web design and development houses have moved away from Flash/Flex implementations because of this constraint.

One of the long standing solutions that became apparent for solving the SEO drawback associated with Flash projects included, building an HTML version of the Flash site with similar content as the Flash site, so search engine bots can effectively index the content on the site. Sounds like a ton of extra work? Of course it is, especially if you are working on a large-scale Flash project. In fact, most web strategists and architects were pulling for AJAX (or in some cases, Silverlight) as an innate surrogate for Flash. Well, until now!

Adobe announced, yesterday, that it is working with (search engines) Google and Yahoo to make flash files (in the SWF format) searchable.  This includes existing SWF content across all versions of the SWF file format. If you have ever been in any capacity that entailed wrestling with this issue, chances are, you can’t contain the excitement that this news brings to you. Same here!

That notwithstanding, I will have to agree with my good friend, Paul Jacobson, the best implementation of RIA (rich internet applications) integrates both Flash/Silverlight and AJAX elements in good moderation. That is to say, “use the right tool for the right problem!”

For more on the news, check out the following links:

• Adobe SWF searchability FAQ
• Adobe Advances Rich Media Search on the Web
• Google, Yahoo to search inside Flash files