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Friday, June 19, 2009
We just added external resource loading to our
Flash indexing
capabilities. This means that when a SWF file loads content from some other file—whether it's
text, HTML, XML, another SWF, etc.—we can index this external content too, and associate it with
the parent SWF file and any documents that embed it.
This new capability improves search quality by allowing relevant content contained in external
resources to appear in response to users' queries. For example, this result currently comes up in
response to the query
2002 VW Transporter 888:
Prior to this launch, this result did not appear, because all of the relevant content is contained
in an XML file loaded by a SWF file.
To date, when Google encounters SWF files on the web, we can:
Index textual content displayed as a user interacts with the file. We click buttons and enter
input, just like a user would.
Discover links within Flash files.
Load external resources and associate the content with the parent file.
Support common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, such as SWFObject and
SWFObject2.
Index sites scripted with AS1 and AS2, even if the ActionScript is obfuscated.
If you don't want your SWF file or any of its external resources crawled by search engines, please
use an appropriate robots.txt rule.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eGoogle can now index external resources loaded by SWF files, improving search results by including relevant content from sources like text, HTML, XML, and other SWF files.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThis update enables content previously inaccessible to search engines, such as information loaded from external XML files, to appear in search results.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle's Flash indexing capabilities encompass indexing textual content, discovering links, loading external resources, supporting common JavaScript embedding techniques, and indexing sites scripted with various ActionScript versions.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWebmasters can control the crawling of their SWF files and external resources using robots.txt rules.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Google now indexes content loaded externally by SWF files, associating it with the parent SWF and embedding documents. This enhances search quality by including relevant external content in search results. Google indexes textual content displayed through user interaction, discovers links within Flash files, loads external resources, and supports common JavaScript embedding techniques. Sites using AS1, AS2, and AS3 are also indexed. To prevent crawling, utilize a `robots.txt` rule.\n"],null,["# Flash indexing with external resource loading\n\n| It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore).\n\nFriday, June 19, 2009\n\n\nWe just added external resource loading to our\n[Flash indexing](/search/blog/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing)\ncapabilities. This means that when a SWF file loads content from some other file---whether it's\ntext, HTML, XML, another SWF, etc.---we can index this external content too, and associate it with\nthe parent SWF file and any documents that embed it.\n\n\nThis new capability improves search quality by allowing relevant content contained in external\nresources to appear in response to users' queries. For example, this result currently comes up in\nresponse to the query\n[2002 VW Transporter 888](https://www.google.com/search?q=2002+VW+Transporter+888):\n\n\nPrior to this launch, this result did not appear, because all of the relevant content is contained\nin an XML file loaded by a SWF file.\n\nTo date, when Google encounters SWF files on the web, we can:\n\n- Index textual content displayed as a user interacts with the file. We click buttons and enter input, just like a user would.\n- Discover links within Flash files.\n- Load external resources and associate the content with the parent file.\n- Support common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, such as `SWFObject` and `SWFObject2`.\n- Index sites scripted with AS1 and AS2, even if the ActionScript is obfuscated. Update on June 19, 2009: We index sites with AS3 as well. The ActionScript version isn't particularly relevant in our Indexing process, so we support older versions of AS in addition to the latest.\n\n\nIf you don't want your SWF file or any of its external resources crawled by search engines, please\nuse an appropriate [robots.txt rule](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro).\n\nWritten by Janis Stipins, Software Engineer"]]
