Do any of the big 3 engines read Flash?

[dburdon]

Through a client I've had a debate with a designer about the readability of Flash. The designer insists that Google amongst others can read some of the embedded information in the code. As I understand it this is not the case. I am not telling my client that using Flash will penalise his site, merely that the Flash presentation takes up space that could be used by something more engine friendly - e.g. a Gif with a relevant alt tag.

Can anyone with a more technical background update me.

David Burdon www.simplyclicks.com

[benihana]

have a look at this search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=.swf&...utf-8&oe=utf-8

Some of the results are .SWF and you can see the text that has been indexed in the snippet.

Its far from perfect, but yes, G can read flash. (havent check the others)