Comments on: Thoughts on Fully Searchable Flash

By: Ain

Ain — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:00:13 +0000

Despite SWF files are indexed, there’s a lot of organisational mess in it (headers / body / text-based design elements) and as much as can be told off the Google search results at this point, due to the mess involved, regular sites are surely prioritised.

Any quick workarounds in the circumstances would be naive to expect and I couldn’t agree more with Peter’s comment above.

Until Adobe and search giants have worked it out, one can be advised to get a custom solution for the indexing, for example a Content Management System that is SEO-friendly, e.g. backbone3 with Flash SEO package.

By: Jim Corbett

Jim Corbett — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:03:50 +0000

Howdy - I’m the player engineer who led the Flash search player development project.

As far a loading in external files - Google is rolling out searching in stages so look for them to support it in the future (I don’t have any dates). This loading of .swf, .txt .xml .gif/jpg/png files (using Loader.load() or loadMovie() etc.) will work much like it does in the web players. If you load an XML or Text file, parse it in actionscript and use the results to populate text fields, this will happen and the text should be found. If you use the info from a txt or xml file to create URL’s dynamically, this will also happen and then the file at that URL will be loaded if your code wants it to happen.

Remember** This is a real Flash player that executes all the actionscript it encounters (AS 1, 2 and 3) and executes actions on buttons and sprites that the Google search engine decides it wants to simulate a click on.
Google’s Search Engine contains the code that DRIVES the execution of the swf application. The Search player executes all the commands that it receives (like moving forward in time through the app, returning all the text current being displayed, and clicking on buttons and sprites that have actions attached to them.) It’s the Google logic that decides when it has visited all the states in a app. I have no visibility to how this code works.

I’m tentatively scheduled to do a talk on this at MAX in San Francisco so come on by!

By: josh >> /dev/blog & » Blog Archive » transparent flash seo: still a way off

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:59:27 +0000

[...] a side note, Peter Elst points out some possible problems that the indexing of SWF content might cause, echoed by Aral Balkan: [...]

By: Odio el pito de la calentadora » Blog Archive » La no importancia de Google indexando SWF de Flash

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:05:04 +0000

[...] de código. Estas direcciones están siendo indexadas y seguidas por el bot de Google, dando un dolor de cabeza a la gente que basaba su modelo de seguridad en la “oscuridad” de los compilados de [...]

By: Joseph Corr » Blog Archive » Improved Google indexing of Flash sites

Joseph Corr » Blog Archive » Improved Google indexing of Flash sites — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:43:17 +0000

[...] here’s a good writeup/review from Peter Elst. And here’s an even better post from Peter, publishing his [...]

By: Youri

Youri — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:20:16 +0000

@Kristof: You could always see what flash loads. Just use Firebug, or even the standard “Activities” in Safari. And if you want to see the remoting calls, use something like Service Capture. On any site. Always has been.

This is something I always tell our clients: Everything that can be seen in the browser is public. Doesn’t matter if it’s loaded via html, Flash or javascript.

By: Peter Elst » Update on SWF Indexing Issues

Peter Elst » Update on SWF Indexing Issues — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:09:33 +0000

[...] Tuesday’s announcement about SWF now getting fully indexed I thought I’d do a little experiment and put up a few [...]

By: Google and Yahoo’s Flash indexing is revealing… too much? at Aral Balkan

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:58:21 +0000

[...] posted his concerns on his blog, wherein he quotes Ryan Stewart from Adobe on what exactly is getting indexed: … it [...]

By: Arul Prasad

Arul Prasad — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:30:18 +0000

I had a post on the same topic as well Pete http://arulprasad.blogspot.com/2008/07/flash-content-to-be-indexed-better-by.html

@kristof - Do you mean that the files which are embedded inside the swf are showing up, or the ones that are being loaded at runtime? if its showing up files that are embedded into the swf, its a bad bad thing!

By: Kristof

Kristof — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:10:27 +0000

Argh! Google has actually started indexing my Flash Files and is revealing all the URL’s of the pictures in Flash. But also the url’s of the MP3’s I placed in Flash. I was hoping Flash would conceal it - because now, anyone can download our music without paying for it.

Now I have to come up with an authentication system for Flash