Flash and Search engines (was RE: [Sigia-l] Using Flash Rollovers to Uncover Information)

[Russ Unger]

David,

You're bringing up something...

> More and more of the search engines can now search within Flash files
> (.SWF). To see this in google, add filetype:swf to your seach 
> term (i.e.
> "filetype:swf macromedia")  the filetype argument is not 
> required, but for
> various reasons today most SWFs are unlikely to be ranked 
> high so adding
> this will make the searching within SWF evident.  We are 
> working with many
> of the major search engines on our search SDK to provide 
> better searching in
> the future, but the old days of unsearchable Flash files are 
> over....:)

...that probably requires some clarification.  The example I was making
note of was that a spider wouldn't jump through content because the HTML
link wouldn't be evident on the page if it's buried inside of the .swf
file.  That said, would a spider be able to search through the .swf
file, find a link and then travel that link within the domain--assuming,
again, that it's inside of the .swf file, or would it treat that as
simply text that it's finding in the .swf file?

It's great that the reigns are loosening a bit, but I don't think it's
entirely there just yet.  I'd love a lot more information on this.

Russ