Does Google, Yahoo and MSN index Flash content?

I read somewhere that Google and others are to start searching meta keywords 'within' Flash animations. Is this true?

The reason is that I want to create a website using an interactive city map on the homepage, close to the top. I know that Google will only cache the first few hundred KB of content, so my concern is getting keywords into the top of the page without pushing the interactive map down too far.

Dave's Answer:

Rather than guess, I asked an expert about this, who answered on condition of anonymity. So, my "expert source says":

"Yes, Google can parse through the text contained within a .swf file and present that information in a Google search. But due to the fact that an entire website can be contained in a single .swf file, whereas a traditional HTML site may consist of hundreds of individual pages, the weightings and rankings given to certain pages may not be accurately portrayed in Google's results. In other words, a site that might have one page talking about Subject X, and a separate page talking about Subject Y... if a qualitatively better (in terms of actual content relevancy) site were created in Flash and everything was contained one .swf, a Google search for Subject X might rank the individual HTML page higher than the actually better .swf-based page.

"One of the recommendations is to break websites up into multiple .swf's that are oriented to topics, but that isn't always a workable solution. It's also possible to use a Flash feature to export content into a page's metadata, but that has its own challenges.

"Finally, because Flash is scripted, and because Google is secretive, we don't know exactly whether Google's spiders can follow the "loadMovie" action... essentially, Flash's equivalent of a hyperlink that loads another page of content. While a spider can follow an <a href... just fine, if it can't follow a loadMovie or other scripted link, then you won't be able to get too deep within a site, even if it has topically-separated .swf's."

In addition, the popular search engine optimization site Webmaster World has this snippet:

"According to rumors both Google and Yahoo have the ability to crawl Flash files. Mind you these are merely rumors as Google rarely comments on their indexing techniques. Search and Flash experts are quick to point out that this new ability does not put Flash indexing and HTML indexing on equal footing. Experts recommend that you still place your search engine text along with your Flash file in HTML pages."

More information is available at this ClickZ article too.

My thanks to both my anonymous source and Mya Leigh for their research and insight

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Categorized: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) (Article 3964, Written by Dave Taylor)
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Reader Comments To Date: 4

Recep said, on May 30, 2007 2:27 AM:

Since I am not familiar with search engine technologies, what I will suggest may be a very stupid idea, I'd like to start with apologizing for that.

If google spiders can search along the swf files, then maybe labeling frames as "page titles" in html might be a solution.. Or, seperate scenes may be searched as seperate html files by google. But I believe in order to achieve this goal in a perfect manner, google (or any other search engine) and adobe have to work together..

DC said, on November 18, 2008 11:17 PM:

Adobe should implement some kind of PAGE object into Flash perhaps. So that when the user reaches a point in the .swf that the designer feels is a new page a PAGE object is returned to search engines that. All pages would need to be identified in a URL so perhaps

something.com/index.html[main.swf]index[] - would be the default to start from the beginning of the main.swf

the user might describe a PAGE object in main.swf called AboutMe . You might be able to access that directly using:
something.com/index.html[main.swf]AboutMe[]

would that seem like a possible idea, that could work.

instinctis said, on June 28, 2010 3:23 PM:

Good article you've posted here, thanks, just to make a quick note to anyone interested in self SEO, that once you're done submiting your website to the important search engines, you could do a quick check for your website in http://ministatus.com and see the exact number of indexed pages or the number of backlinks (according to most important engines) ... more you could do a daily check and see the changes or just download your seo score in PDF file and hand it to someone who knows what to make of it ;-)

Kyle Style said, on October 22, 2010 9:11 AM:

I have a homepage with only a flash "slideshow" on it and the text I have in it is present when I search for my site in a Google search. So, yes at least some flash content is "searchable".

I also have a flash file that loads xml files into the swf for text. So far, it seems that this is not searchable, but I may be wrong.

My idea on how to combat this, is to create a div layer underneath the flash with text in it. This may be abusive, but with this technique, you can put anything and as much information as you want without it effecting the aesthetics of your page.

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

Does Google, Yahoo and MSN index Flash content?

Reader Comments To Date: 4

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

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