Google Search will stop indexing Flash content

Google announced today that Google Search will no longer index Flash content from later this year. Google engineering manager Dong-Hwi Lee said in a statement: “Google Search will stop supporting Flash later this year. In Web pages that contain Flash content, Google Search will ignore the Flash content. Google Search will stop indexing standalone SWF files. Most users and websites won’t see any impact from this change.”

Adobe has previously announced that it will stop updating and distributing Flash by the end of 2020. In addition, Google has also announced that Chrome will no longer support Flash next year.

Currently, less than 5% of websites are still using Flash content, down from nearly 30% in 2011. So Google believes that most users and websites almost don’t feel this change when they stop indexing Flash content later this year.