Google indexing Flash

This morning, a very significant change was spotted in Googles index. For the first time ever, Flash .swf files are seen in the Google SERPs.

The issue is discussed at

www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/23572-2-15.htm

If you want to see some examples, try just about any search including the term SWF. Most interesting is doing a search for ‘gerbil swf’, where the second result even has a ‘View as HTML’ link beside it. The link doesn’t actually work very well, but it is proof that Google now treats Flash files in a new way.

The text snipped shown in the screen dump above is clearly retrieved from the load screen of the swf file, and is probably embedded as pure text. I have some strong difficulties seeing even Google indexing image data as text…

However, I’m not quite certain if this is just pre-IPO hype, or an actual indexing of the contents of Flash content.