Last year Google announced that they would be able to index Flash, but nothing really came of it. Flash, in my opinion, is problematic from a search perspective. Google is now announcing that they have added external resource loading to their Flash capabilities. If the Flash content pulls information in from an external file like an XML, HTML, or text file, Google will be able to index that content and make the relationship between it and the original Flash file.

Here are the capabilities Google says it has for indexing Flash:

• Index textual content displayed as a user interacts with the file. We click buttons and enter input, just like a user would.
• Discover links within Flash files.
• Load external resources and associate the content with the parent file.
• Support common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, such as SWFObject and SWFObject2.
• Index sites scripted with AS1 and AS2, even if the ActionScript is obfuscated. Update on June 19, 2009: We index sites with AS3 as well. The ActionScript version isn’t particularly relevant in our Indexing process, so we support older versions of AS in addition to the latest.