This is a great news! I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a long time. If you don’t believe me that Google is indexing flash try to search on Google by this kind of phrases: “flex filetype:swf“; and you’ll get a list of SWF files that were indexed by Google.

How does Google do this? They explained that they are scanning the SWF file the same way an user explores it, so they are looking for:

• text - is indexed
• external files like xml, txt, etc - are indexed
• button, links, event, etc which are the way to navigate in the SWF file - are also indexed

This new “player” takes the text together with its context (the way it got there, etc) and is indexing it. Images and FLV file are not indexed.

Now that flash is starting to be indexed we will see an explosion of new sites that will use flash technology because this searchability was the big stop for flash to expand. Also SEO services for flash will appear and with every step flash will be equal to the old HTML.

Regarding Flex technology…

Will Adobe Flex applications now be more easily found by Google search, including those that access remote data?

Yes, any type of SWF content including Adobe Flex applications and SWF created by Adobe Flash authoring will benefit from improved indexing and search results. The improved SWF search also includes the capability to load and access remote data like XML calls and loaded SWFs.

…this is a quote from Adobe’s anouncement.

Why now and not earlier? We don’t really know but it may be because recently they published the SWF file format specification for Flash Player 9.

Interesting is that Microsoft is not in this partnership, maybe because they have their own technology which is direct competitor to flash - and I’m talking about Silverlight.

From official Google Webmaster Central we have this http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html and please read also the comments… you’ll find interesting things.

Official announcements:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swf_searchability.html

Other articles:
http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=1470
http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=1471
http://www.jonnymac.com/blog/2008/06/30/adobe-announces-swf-searchability/