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Google Analytics is now offering Flash tracking. The tracking code is translated into ActionScript 3 programming language. While Google Analytics has been able to provide workarounds in the past, this new feature simplifies the way to track Flash, Flex, and AS3 Content.

Sprout, a company that helps businesses create rich media content, used the code to track videos across MySpace and iGoogle. The Google Analytics team talked to them about their experience:

What do you think of the announcement? Leave us a comment and let us know.

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Google Toolbar 5 for IE was recently released, and it includes an update to its News feature. Now, a drop down box includes tabs for 5 news niches: Top Stories, U.S., World, Entertainment, and Science/Technology.

You can check the headlines without leaving the page you’re currently browsing or click a link to read more about a news item you’re interested in.

Here’s a screenshot:

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Today, there are more updates to Google products than you can shake a stick at. So intead of writing a bunch of short, little posts, I have consolidated them into one for you, faithful SEW reader.

Both my awesome husband and my awesome 11 year old son have pointed out to me the new changes to iGoogle. I personally don’t use my iGoogle page all that much (Keepin’ it real [simple]), but I did browse over to it and found some cosmetic changes (The Foo Fighters theme was already there.)

Notice the tab on the left hand side. It includes links to the widgets on your iGoogle page. When you click on one of the links, it switches to a screen with that widget. Some take up the whole page. Others present a list of similar widgets as suggestions. Still others make use of Google reader to present a feed.

Moving on to other Google properties….

Webmaster Tools now testing a Message Center warning that alerts webmasters to possible vulnerabilities with their Content Management Systems (CMS).

Google TV ads has announced new partnerships with COREMedia Systems and Harris Corporation. The COREMedia partnership allows CoreDirect customers to view their Google TV ads right along with their CoreDirect data. The Harris Corp. one adds more inventory for Google TV advertisers.

AdWords has separated the metrics for Google and search partners such as Ask, AOL, etc. This is probably in preparation for the implementation of the Yahoo search advertising partnership.

Last but most important is the changes to the Google algorithm regarding Adobe Flash. Brian Ussery has a writeup about it on his extremely minimalistic-looking blog. Basically, he finds that indexing of Flash still isn’t ready for prime time. I know there may have been some hope with recent news of Adobe working with Google to provide better indexing, but we’re just not there yet, folks.

And that concludes the flurry of Google updates for Friday, October 17, 2008. Leave your thoughts, impressions, etc in the comments!

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Adobe released Creative Suite 4 this week and included with the update is a Google Site Search-powered help feature. Google Site Search is used with the new Adobe Community Help, which harnesses the power of social media and online communities to provide another source of support.

Adobe Senior Product Manager John Nack, writing on the Official Google blog, said, “We’ve plugged the whole community brain trust right into the Suite and used the power of Google Site Search to do it. Creative Suite 4 customers can find fast, relevant information from our online communities, without ever having to leave their desktop work environments, making design faster and more fun. And because we’ve built the Adobe Flash Platform into the whole Suite, other developers can take these concepts even farther. This is just the start of great online integration to come.”

Indeed, recently Adobe provided Flash technology to Google in order to assist with indexing of text within Flash.

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Yahoo has announced its latest search index update. So, if you see a change up in your rankings, now you know why. But earlier news of new crawling abilities for Adobe Flash don’t appear to be part of this update. Instead, expect to see those updates in the future.

“Yahoo! is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation,” said Sean Suchter, vice president Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering.

Yahoo’s last update occurred on May 28, 2008.

Are you seeing any changes in your Yahoo rankings? Let us know in the comments.

For years SEOs have been about the inability of search engines to crawl flash pages. But now Adobe is making an effort to keep Flash in the web development toolbox. They’ve announced the provision of Flash technology to Google and Yahoo in order to facilitate the indexing of sites and pages created with Flash.

“Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”

Over at the Google Webmaster Central Blog, an FAQ was posted offering up more details about the update. Here are some highlights:

• Google will now be able to better crawl the text content of SWF files. The content includes buttons, menus, self-contained websites developed in Flash and “everything in between.”
• Google can use the text it crawls to provide a descriptive “snippet” for its search results.
• Links included in Flash content will also be crawled.
• If your Flash file is loaded by JavaScript, Google won’t be able to read it
• If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file or another SWF file, Google will index that separately from the original Flash file.

Google says it can’t crawl images, videos or FLV files because they do not contain text content.

What do you think about search engines crawling Flash? Are you more inclined to use Flash on your sites now? Leave your reaction in the comments!

Despite all the controversy over Microsoft using Silverlight to take over the rich internet market from Adobe Flash, the software giant seems to be not even trying. In fact, even most Microsoft web sites are using Flash instead of Silverlight.

A quick check through Microsoft properties reveals that only the Microsoft Home Page and the Microsoft Developer Network use Silverlight; MSN Video, Zune.net and the new WWTelescope all use Flash.

Microsoft even appears to be on par with Adobe when it comes to platforms outside of Windows. Silverlight works on Safari for Mac or PC, as well as on Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers. Silverlight even seems to work “unofficially” on Opera (as long you pretend you’re not running Opera).

Silverlight isn’t supported in Linux, but as an avid Ubuntu fan, I can tell you that Flash does not work well in Linux either. A host of open-source alternatives, like Gnash, have mostly solved that issue. Former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen’s fears of Microsoft favoring Windows seem incredibly unfounded.

But if Microsoft is playing nice for a change, why are they afraid of promoting their product — and why are they afraid of even using it? Maybe “nice” is too novel a strategy for Redmond. It may take some getting used to — for everyone.