Till now, google rarely included scanned documents in it’s search engine. This is mostly because it couldnt determine the content in these files, so they would be almost useless for the people who searched with Google.

Now, Google is using optical character recognition software to allow users to search Web-based PDF files.

This summer, the company revealed that it had optimized its Adobe Flash Player technology to enable search engines to index multimedia content produced in the Flash file format — content that previously had been undiscoverable.

“We are initially working with Google and Yahoo to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web,” explained David Wadhwani, Adobe’s vice president. “And we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”

source: newsfactor