Google, Yahoo to Search Inside Flash Files

Adobe announced Tuesday that Google and Yahoo are adding search capabilities that will enable users to look inside the content of files encoded in Adobe's Flash file format -- SWF.

The content inside SWF files has heretofore been ignored by the search engine giants, but Adobe has worked with both companies to make sure that their search engine technology can now look inside existing and future SWF content, including text, hyperlinks, audio and video content.

"End users will be getting more accurate search results because there's a lot of information in SWF files that will now be fully indexed, including more information in Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)," said Justin Everett-Church, senior product manager for Adobe Flash Player, Platform BU.

"And content producers are now able to put Flash files online and know that they're going to bring more users through organic search. The good thing is that they don't have to do anything to enable this capability -- it works on any SWF file," Everett-Church told Macworld.

Google is already beginning to offer search results including data inside Flash files, and Yahoo will follow suit with an update to its Yahoo Search engine, according to Adobe.