Flex Pasta » Hey Google! Can you read the contents of my SWF?
Hey Google! Can you read the contents of my SWF?
Were you at Adobe MAX this year? Jim Corbett presented on “The Searchable SWF File”. Google and Adobe came together to create Ichabod, a virtual user that can read a flash movie just as a user would and then index the swf just like an html page. It appears that the searching of SWF files is still in the early stages, but I thought I would give it a try. I have a SWF file that has embeded html text in an mx:Text tag. I want to see if Google can find the inner text and have it appear in search results.
Here is the SWF file: mx.controls.DataGrid
Now let’s check the results at Google
First, all swf files on this site:
Second, all swf files on this site with a keyword of “Column”:
Third, search the web for mx.controls.DataGrid
Let’s see what happens!
4 Comments
1. Adrian Parker replies at 30th December 2008, 4:38 am :
Hi - interesting idea.
Has your site been recrawled by Google’s bot since the SWF was posted?
2. Brian Telintelo replies at 30th December 2008, 3:09 pm :
Yes, good point. This page has been found by Google. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=Hey+Google&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=flexpasta.com&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images
However, the SWF file has not been found yet!
3. Brian Telintelo replies at 18th January 2009, 9:46 am :
The test has been a failure. As you can see, the DataGrid.swf has been found by Google, but no text inside the SWF file. It appears at this point that search engines still need more time to work out searching SWF files.
4. Aleksander Wisniewski replies at 13th July 2009, 7:27 am :
Google can’t read eaven thier own technology - gwt.
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