Google Can Now Index Scanned PDFs

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Google Can Now Index Scanned PDFs

Google just doesn’t seem to cease in rolling out really cool stuff. Now, they have developed technology that allows them to index scanned PDF files. Google is already able to read documents saved as PDFs, but will now also have access to scanned PDFs.

There are tons of government and scholarly articles on the web whose only search engine friendly properties are metadata. Now, using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, Google can scan these files and convert them to text files that are readable by the search engines.

Google also recently made Flash files readable, as well as files hidden behind forms. Now PDFs like the first result listed when you search for repairing aluminum wiring.

Any companies that have a lot of content printed out and haven’t felt like utilizing other technologies to convert their scans to text may now consider putting these on their sites and letting Google do the work for them. It’s always good from an SEO standpoint to add new content, not to mention how useful it may be.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 10:52 pmand is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.