# Flash and search engine indexing

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flash-and-search-engine-indexing/164827>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 28, 2003, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flash-and-search-engine-indexing/164827 "2003-03-28T17:47:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Smashed\_Ice\_Cream](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Smashed\_Ice\_Cream](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smashed_Ice_Cream)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flash-and-search-engine-indexing/164827/1 "2003-03-28T17:47:18Z")

</div>

Does flash text somehow get indexed in search engines? I googled my own name and found a match of my biography on a site done entirely in flash. There were no meta tags, no keywords imbedded, and I looked everywhere in the source code for where my name would have possibly shown up in the coding - nada. (I even checked linked URL and IMG)

Is it somehow possible for google to read the .swf files and extract text from them for indexing? Is there some other way that I can’t figure out for this to work? I’m pretty baffled.