Search Engine News :: Optimise Web Sites for Organic Search: SiteProNews: Google Can Now Index . . . Flash! An Interview with Michael Marshall (Part 1)

Monday, September 06, 2004

SiteProNews: Google Can Now Index . . . Flash! An Interview with Michael Marshall (Part 1)

SiteProNews: Google Can Now Index . . . Flash! An Interview with Michael Marshall (Part 1): "Google Can Now Index . . . Flash!"

how do we know that Google is now indexing the contents
of Flash files? Is there a way that we can search the index just
for Flash?

Michael Marshall:

Yes. You can enter your search term in Google, and along with
that search term, use the filetype operator and restrict your
search to the file extension ".swf". This will search for your
search term only in Macromedia Flash files. You should see
[FLASH] just before each listing in the results page that is a
Flash document.

For example, put the following in the search box at Google:

"Best Free Banner Exchange Market" filetype:swf

Question:

How can we extract the text found in a Flash file to see what
Google sees?

Macromedia has a Flash Search Engine SDK
(http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download/search_engine/)
that will give us just what we need. The SDK (Software
Development Kit) includes an application named 'swf2html'.
Swf2html extracts text and links from a Macromedia Flash .SWF
file, and returns the data to stdout or as an HTML document.
Swf2html is provided as a compiled application and as a static
library for linked library implementation. For complete
functionality, see the file Readme.htm included in the SDK.