File types indexable by Google

Google can index the content of most text-based files and certain encoded document formats. The file type is determined by the Content-Type HTTP header returned when Google crawls the file, though in some cases Google may use the file extension or re-parse the file using a different parser if the Content-Type header is missing or incorrect.

Supported flat file types

The following flat file types are supported. These are files where the content is stored in plain, unencoded text (though they may use markup tags).

  • Comma-Separated Values (.csv)
  • Google Earth (.kml, .kmz)
  • GPS eXchange Format (.gpx)
  • HTML (.htm, .html, other file extensions)
  • Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg)
  • TeX/LaTeX (.tex)
  • Text (.txt, .text, other file extensions), including source code in common programming languages, such as:
    • Basic source code (.bas)
    • C/C++ source code (.c, .cc, .cpp, .cxx, .h, .hpp)
    • C# source code (.cs)
    • Java source code (.java)
    • Perl source code (.pl)
    • Python source code (.py)
  • Wireless Markup Language (.wml, .wap)
  • XML (.xml)

Supported encoded file types

The following encoded file types are supported. These are binary files or complex containers that require a specific parser to extract the human-readable text.

  • Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf)
  • Adobe PostScript (.ps)
  • Electronic Publication (.epub)
  • Hancom Hanword (.hwp)
  • Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
  • Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx)
  • Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
  • OpenOffice presentation (.odp)
  • OpenOffice spreadsheet (.ods)
  • OpenOffice text (.odt)
  • Rich Text Format (.rtf)

Supported media formats

Google can also index the following media formats:

  • Image formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG, and AVIF
  • Video formats: 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, DivX, M2V, M3U, M3U8, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGV, QVT, RAM, RM, VOB, WebM, WMV, and XAP

Search by file type

You can use the filetype: operator in Google Search to limit results to a specific file type or file extension. For example, filetype:rtf galway will search for RTF files and URLs ending in .rtf whose content contains the term "galway".