Meta Tags

[sam236]

Can someone tell me if google is the only search engine that skips the meta tags? I need someone to help me on this.

[jimkirk1943]

Are you sure googe skips these tags ??? I thought they held less weight but that they skip them is new to me ? How do you know this im interested

[ezestseo]

Yes, you are right "jimkirk1943". Meta tags held less weight age but we can't ignore to them.

[Jesus Carrera]

Google still read that tags, you can know it for sure because the meta description, often is used as the description in the search results. For SEO they were important in the past, they aren't as important as other factors nowadays.

[bgmacaw]

When if comes to Google, Yahoo and Bing...

All of them use the Title.

All of them may use the Description to display in search results but this isn't given. How much impact this plays in actual ranking isn't quite as clear but it may affect click through.

Keywords is ignored by Google or Yahoo. Bing says that they may consider it as a minor factor in determining relevance.

[DuaneZ]

My thought is this, it takes next to no time to add the META's in so I just do it because you never know what will or will not change in the future.

A couple years ago I saw a post (in some other forum) about not adding alt tags to photos and a lot of people were saying they would not anymore to save on time.

Again, how long does it take to add a couple tags to photos, I still get traffic from photos that convert to sales and I often think about this old post I saw and these people who were not getting extra traffic as a result.

[jimkirk1943]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Keywords is ignored by Google or Yahoo. Bing says that they may consider it as a minor factor in determining relevance.

Bgmacaw are you saying that the keyword section in all in one seo plugin is not worth filling in ?

[4you]

very nice subect, i'm doing seo and this is very helpful (;

[crudenbay]

Originally Posted by jimkirk1943

Bgmacaw are you saying that the keyword section in all in one seo plugin is not worth filling in ?

Google pays no attention to the keywords meta tag...that's come from Matt Cutts (Google guru) himself.

[paulgl]

Well, the title tag is not a meta tag.

Google skips the meta keywords. I can't believe anyone worth their
salt in SEO did not know that.

They may, with a huge emphasis on MAY, show your meta desription in
the SERPS if they feel it is truthful and useful. Many times, they don't.
And they don't use it for any rankings. Google makes this perfectly clear.

Forget metas. The future is HTML5 and other things. metas are going the
way of the dinosaur. And IF you have no idea of the exciting things of
HTML5, well get busy, man!

Past: metas
Future: Rich snippets!

Paul

[FredJones]

My understanding is that Google takes a notice of the meta tag and does count it in the SEO context. How much? Not much. But do they count meta tags at all? Yes, I believe.

Just my own ideas - need not match with anyone else's.

[Dani P]

From what I've read, they dont ignore them but they do hold less weight now.

....and has a bit of proof, I've never had meta descriptions and my site wasnt in the search results at all, I've put it titles, descriptions and keywords and my results have definately improved.

[adenclark]

The title and description tags certainly do make a difference. When someone types in a keyword related to your site, if your site is listed, the keyword will highlight which is why your description should be relevant to your content as well as the backlinks you are building to that specific listing.

As for keyword meta, this is of very little use but you should make sure all is highly relevant anyway and if using a blog, i always put in keyword tags, as well as the same keywords within the seo pack.

Hope this helps.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by adenclark

The title and description tags certainly do make a difference. When someone types in a keyword related to your site, if your site is listed, the keyword will highlight which is why your description should be relevant to your content as well as the backlinks you are building to that specific listing.

As for keyword meta, this is of very little use but you should make sure all is highly relevant anyway and if using a blog, i always put in keyword tags, as well as the same keywords within the seo pack.

Hope this helps.

I was going to say the same thing.

The page title & meta description tags are very important in the SERPs.

If your keyword isn't inside both tags well that's the webmasters own fault, for not showing in the SERPs.

Don't forget Meta tags, the description tag still works in the SERPs. Keep the description meta tag relevant & you stand a very good chance for that tag to show in the SERPs description.

[paulgl]

BUT TITLE IS NOT AS META TAG!

Google ignores the meta keywords and description for rankings.

If you really believe they count for something, than you are using
them for old fashioned directories, not google.

If you have never seen a meta description NOT in the serps, you
have not been around long or search for much.

Do a search for warrior forum without quotes. The second
listing will be the old warrior forum site. warriorforum.com/forum.
No meta description is quoted. Because there is none.

Do a search for hasbro. Near the top, their star wars clone site
shows up. Notice the listing? Now check the site out.

Do a search for star wars toys.
Hasbro's site comes up first. Notice what is listed in the serp?

Completely different words on both searches. Neither listing quotes the
meta description for the star wars site.

Now you know the rest of the story. Depending on what you search for,
that is what determines what google shows. Sometimes the description,
sometimes something else to show the searcher what is on the page.

Now, I just gave away a secret that I use all the time. I'll let you figure out
how to exploit it.

Paul

[yukon]

Yea, I know the title isn't a meta tag.

Still If the keyword isn't in the SERP title or description, a page won't rank worth a crap when someone is doing a search for the keyword.

Hasbro Index page meta description code (same as image below).

<meta name="Description" id="Description" content="Hasbro Toys, Games, Action Figures, Board Games, Digital Games, Online Games, and more..." />

So, we still stand a very good chance of the entire meta description tag showing in the SERPs with the keywords.

I understand that G won't show the meta description 100% of the time. I also know that G shows most of my own sites meta description in the SERPs.

I bet the Star Wars site is getting a huge boost from the Google Site Links below the TLD Hasbro site (#1 in the image above).

[InternetMarketingIQ]

How can anyone who does not work for Team Google know exactly what Google is or is not considering in their search Algorithm?

[yukon]

Originally Posted by InternetMarketingIQ

How can anyone who does not work for Team Google know exactly what Google is or is not considering in their search Algorithm?

Who is the question for?

Myself, I know for a fact what shows in the SERPs for my own sites.

I use the meta description tag because that's what I want to show in the SERP description, & it works most times.

[paulgl]

Searching for star wars toys gives a different looking listing than Yukon's
above. Same site, different looking listing. The meta description of the
site is actually star wars clone wars. Notice google lists more in the
one above. Notice it's not even in Yukon's listing.

You can use this to your advantage, if you are willing to think outside
the box.

Paul

[yukon]

The Star Wars site has a very short (Star Wars Clone Wars) meta description tag.

I bet they could (If they wanted) get the meta description to show in the SERPs description, If they would make that meta description tag longer (more keywords, etc...)

<meta name="Description" id="Description" content="Star Wars Clone Wars" />

[cagliostro]

Meta Tags (keywords and description) are still used, no matter what some "gurus" say.

They are also very much used from Google Adsense Bot to display relevent ads for your website.

[yukon]

paulgl,

The meta description does show in the last Star Wars example.

Here is the Star Wars entire SERP description

1) Star Wars Clone Wars (meta description tag)

2) starwars Revenge of the Fallen – Official Site of starwars (anchor-text over 100K internal links)

3) Hasbro Toy Shop - Free Boba Fett Offer (anchor-text over 8k internal links)

You can do a page search here on the G cache for #2 & #3 (above). #1 (above) is the actual short meta description tag.

Again, Hasbro made the meta description tag very short, so G had to add more content to the SERPs description to keep all the SERPs description similar in text character length. Otherwise the SERPs would all look like a mess with random description lengths that varied in large amounts of text.

[jhonsean]

Google normally crawls meta tags for their own information to your descriptions site as you can see its visible when searching your site but still less important its the off page optimization weights.

[paulgl]

I hear you Yukon...but the meta description is not quoted in your image.
Which was my point. Search for hasbro, and the star wars page shows #2,
minus the meta. Search for star wars toys, google adds something to it.
Use both of these situations to your advantage.

Look at the second listing in your image. It's the hasbro star wars site. The same
site in my search. In your search, it is not an indented listing. It is a separate
listing.

At least we can agree that google will add something if it feels necessary. Your
meta description is not a gimme for google. I should also point out that if your site
was put in the DMOZ, whatever description you submitted may actually show up as
well.

Paul

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

When if comes to Google, Yahoo and Bing...

All of them use the Title.

All of them may use the Description to display in search results but this isn't given. How much impact this plays in actual ranking isn't quite as clear but it may affect click through.

Keywords is ignored by Google or Yahoo. Bing says that they may consider it as a minor factor in determining relevance.

The title tag isn't a meta tag. It's one of the four essential html elements of a web page. Meta tags are optional.

Meta tags can acutally hurt if they are identical across your site. This needs to be defined so we don't confuse people and think that title tags are meta tags and are useless, as we both know the Title tags is probably the single most important SEO element for on-page.

My adice, if you have a big site, forget meta tags, they are not worth it. If you have a small site, go ahead and add them.