As we’re sure most iOS users are painfully aware of by now, Apple’s iOS platform does not support flash. Google has also made changes to Android where newer versions of Android will no longer support Flash either. This means that websites that still use Flash will no longer work properly on newer devices.
Unfortunately we can’t tell which websites use Flash, but thanks to Google, they have announced that they will now start indicating which websites use Flash in their search results on mobile, so that users will know that the page won’t load correctly, or that there will be content that will not load at all, thus saving them time.
According to Google, “A common annoyance for web users is when websites require browser technologies that are not supported by their device. When users access such pages, they may see nothing but a blank space or miss out a large portion of the page’s contents. Starting today, we will indicate to searchers when our algorithms detect pages that may not work on their devices.”
Of course this doesn’t mean that the website is completely unusable. After all it could mean that a small portion of the website uses Flash, like to display an ad on the side which does not affect your browsing, but it’s still a pretty nifty update, so the next time you are browsing the web and searching for things, keep an eye out for these indicators (as pictured above) to save yourself some time and frustration at trying to get the website to load.
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