After receiving numerous requests from webmasters, Googlebot is promising that it has introduced code for the search algorithms that will offer better indexing for Flash files.

Google engineers Ron Adler and Janis Stipins introduced the new changes last week. Since then, there has been a flurry of blog posts from SEO professionals and webmasters about the announcement.

According to the engineers' posting on the official Google Blog (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/), "Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files" by improving "the performance of [the] Flash indexing algorithm" with the integration of Adobe's Flash Player technology.

"In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines...now web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content" promising "better search results and snippets."

With that said, there are still limitations to the new algorithm. For example, Google is not indexing Flash images or text associated with such images, only textual content at this time.

"Similarly, we do not generate any anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text."

To get more questions and answers about indexing of Flash files, check out the official Q & A entry on Google's Webmaster Central Blog.