After a long wait Google’s search algorithm is finally going to start showing Flash websites some real love. They have been working on an algorith that index’s textual content in Flash files.

For the ‘Flashers’ this means that Google will be able to see more of your website content. Opening the door to comprehensive page indexing, improved search results and better snippets (the blurb below your search listing).

The algorithm will only apply to content within SWF files for now. This includes Flash menu’s and buttons, banners, and self-contained Flash websites. Textual content within images and FLV files (think Youtube) remains unindexable, to the Googlebot those files contain no textual elements.

There are still a few limitations with Flash files that load HTML, XML or other SWF files, JavaScript and some languages. Google finishes by saying they’re making progress on these issues.

Google Learns to crawl Flash - from The Official Google Blog

Google’s improved Flash indexing - Further information from Google Webmaster Central Blog