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Do search engines index Macromedia Flash Shockwave (SWF) files?

April 26, 2017files Flash index Macromedia search engines SHOCKWAVE SWF

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Do search engines index Macromedia Flash Shockwave (SWF) files?

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Adobe, now the owner of Macromedia and its Flash technology, is working with Google and Yahoo to improve Flash searchability, and both Google and Yahoo are able to parse almost any visible text within Flash files. Google’s official explanation points out two remaining limitations of flash indexing. They do not yet index external media embedded in flash files and cannot index bidirectional language content within Flash (such as Hebrew or Arabic). They still recommend the use of Flash for primarily decorative purposes. According to Dave Taylor’s “expert source”, if a site is created primarily in Flash it is not recommended to put it in a single SWF file, but rather break it up into multiple topic specific SWF files to help search engines categorize and rank them better. In other words, while Flash indexing is supported it is still not on par with plain text and HTML indexing. Bing (formerly known as MSN Search) does not yet support Flash indexing.