Which SE use Meta Tags?

[Hope]

We hear more and more how meta tags aren't that important now, but the question remains... Do we need them?

1.) Do SE use meta tags?
2.) Which me meta tags are used now?
3.) How important are the tags for each search engine?
4.) Do meta keywords help or only hurt if used improperly now?

Would love to hear everyones thoughts on this.

[Advisor]

The Title tag is the important one (but it's not a meta tag). Plus, your Meta description tag should also be used. It doesn't hurt to use your Meta keyword tag (in my experience), so long as you use relevant keyphrases that are already on your page. But even if you don't use the Meta keyword tag, you'll probably still do fine with most engines.

I don't use any other Meta tags. Oh, well...actually, I just added the Meta tag to stop the MS smart tags from working on my site. I-Help Discussion list just mentioned it today. Here it is if anyone is interested:

<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

Jill

[JuniorHarris]

Do meta keywords help or only hurt if used improperly now?

Anything used improperly can cause problems, but I do not see where modest use (as intended) of meta tags will have any ill effect.

How important are the tags for each search engine?

Many suggest using keywords and description for Google is useless as Google will ignore them since it does full page indexing. However, it is very unlikely Google would penalize their use, and they very well may still be considered into the overall keyword density (keyword vector) for a given page/site.

Having said that, I would also surmise any engine which does not perform comparable full-page indexing as Google will most likely [have to] place some weight upon these tags. Again proper use should not be penalized, and worst case the tags are simply ignored.

Which me meta tags are used now?

I typically only use title, description, and keywords (in that order).

Do SE use meta tags?

alltheweb (fast) loves title tags, keywords and descriptions!~
altavista enjoys them equally well, though scooter is not as fast as fast!~
Inktomi /MSN (and partners) appear to use them as well.
Excite is peeking at them too!~
Google not likely (but not be penalized as I see many in the cache)

The final decision to meta or not should be based upon personal research and experience, but if utilized properly they may indeed be used to tweak or target the page for specific keywords and/or themes within some engines....almost as they were intended!

PS: Let me also add the meta smart tag to me list!~;) (thanks webwhiz)

[ihelpyou]

YEs. Believe I'll add that smart tag thingy also.

It does not hurt to keep the descr. and keywords tag there. We really do not know how much relevance is put on those tags. The engines would never tell us this.

You can be sure though that the tags are not penalized for their use as long as they are done properly.

I will keep them for now.

[Blue]

webwhiz, that's another one (the MS smart tags tag) for the "tips of the day" section (hint, hint).

[Sharon & Roy]

Originally posted by Hope

1.) Do SE use meta tags?

Hello Hope,

If you mean, do SE use keyword meta tags to help BOOST your rankings for keywords, then the answer is ...

NO, with the exception of Inktomi.

Originally posted by Hope

2.) Which me meta tags are used now?

All you need is the keywords and description meta tags.

Originally posted by Hope

3.) How important are the tags for each search engine?

Google does not index these tags at all, so to them it is worthless. Inktomi still uses the keywords tag to help boost your rankings. Others don't use them to boost your rankings.

A good way to find out if a particualr engine will even index the meta tags is to include a special keyword to easily search for. If found, they index that tag. An example of your special keyword could be ... myspecialkeyword4research

Originally posted by Hope

4.) Do meta keywords help or only hurt if used improperly now? Would love to hear everyones thoughts on this.

You should always use any tag properly. Having said that, we would recommend that you include the keywords and description tags on all your pages. Those engines that do not index them will not penalize you for having them.

[Web Witch]

Sharon, why does your websites open up a new window for each page? Terribly annoying and you won't receive any return visitors.

WW

[Sharon & Roy]

Originally posted by Web Witch

Sharon, why does your websites open up a new window for each page?

Hello WW,

Will explain this once we understand better what you are actually referring to.


Originally posted by Web Witch

Terribly annoying and you won't receive any return visitors.

Great, WW, thanks for your feedback, we love to get it.

But your statement is quite vague and we are not sure we understand what you mean, so would you please be so kind as to elaborate, thanks?

[Web Witch]

....didn't want to insult, spend some time :read:ing, I don't know anything about how you are constructing your sites, software, etc. so anymore of an answer might not have mattered.

WW

[Sharon & Roy]

Hi WW,

Thank you for your reply.

Originally posted by Web Witch

Sharon, why does your websites open up a new window for each page?

As we clearly state in the opening sentence ... "The iWomen Online Network is Coming Soon, so please pardon our dust while continue to develop each section." ... we believe that after folks read that much that they will do one of the following.

1.) Bookmark and leave or just leave.

2.) Continue reading and/or explore other pages.

So if they decide to explore a page and find it to be non-existant or "Coming Soon," the tendancy is to click the "back" button or to close the window at that point. If we open our currently "under construction" pages in new windows, then all folks have to do is to explore as far as they can or want and then merely close the window to return to the Home Page. A "ONE CLICK" return from anywhere on our Site or from any other domain we link to (and we link to MANY) that belong to our partners.

This will all be explained to visitors before they start their journey into our Network.

Plus the Home Page as you see it today, will not be at all like the one we will launch. Most of the info there is just for us to "test" is all.

[Web Witch]

Sharon, a couple of hints and remember your tendancy may not be mine:

-If your site is not complete don't put in a sig.
-When developing a site just have an under construction type page with no links to other pages.
-When developing a website put the working pages someplace else for testing.

WW

[ihelpyou]

Well, this is true, however S & R are testing things for the engines and we know the front page is best for this. Although they could put a sentence on it saying that "this is not the final site" or something to that affect.

[Sharon & Roy]

Hi WW,

We love your feedback, it's just that we are not completely following your train of thinking, so if you would help us to understand it better please, thanks.

Originally posted by Web Witch

-If your site is not complete don't put in a sig.

Can you please explain to us, why not? What would the reason be to not allow folks to come visit our Site if we are conducting various tests?

We don't see the logic behind this, as how else can we test our concepts and pages unless folks come over to take a look and how else can they know about it unless they see the link in our sig file?

Originally posted by Web Witch

-When developing a site just have an under construction type page with no links to other pages.

Okay, WW, we see now that maybe you don't understand that we are testing the Home Page and the links to other pages as to which ideas and concepts are most popular and "working" and which ones are not. So let us quickly add that folks can let us know if they are interested in a particular area/concept by sending us an eMail, and they do. Everyday we get eMail from one or more sections/pages telling us that they want to be a part of this or a part of that and for us to notify them as soon as we launch that section.

That information cannot be gathered with a page as you suggest, do you see what we mean?

Originally posted by Web Witch

-When developing a website put the working pages someplace else for testing.

Again, this would not help us test our ideas and concepts at all.

Forgive us for asking you, and we are not being critical in the least, just trying to understand your way of thinking is all.

But, what do these words mean to you ... "The iWomen Online Network is Coming Soon, so please pardon our dust while we continue to develop each section."

Does that not conjure up in your mind pages that are not done and still under development?

If not, can you please explain to us what you thought, we'd be most happy to have that type of information, because if you think it, chances are good lots of others would too, thanks.

WW, you see, we are of the mindset that once a person reads that, if they are not interested to learn more about our Site right now, that they will either bookmark it and leave or just leave. But the fact that many do not leave before they view our other pages (and we know this because of all the eMail we get daily) is an extremely positive indication that what we have so far is worth looking into, even after they know the Site is not yet done. This is crucial for us to test and to know about before we put up our final version and launch the Site.

(We understand that most Web Site designers and SEO specialists don't do these type of tests as the norm, but we feel it is better to test and eliminate what will not work and focus on what will work, right from the start and not after we launch.)

WW, please do not read any of this the wrong way, as it IS NOT any kind of a personal attack against you at all (heck, we LOVE to get feedback, so this is all positive stuff for us) or even that we are attempting to defend a position that needs no defense, but we are merely interacting with you in open dialog, so that you can help us see what you see from a visitor's perspective.

Thanks bunches for your help as we totally respect and appreciate your comments and opinions.

[Mel]

Hi Hope:

Pardon me, but to me this seems like a good and fair question, and one which I would answer as follows;

1.) Do SE use meta tags?

Yes some search engines use meta tags in their ranking algos. All search engines also use the Title tag, which is not strictly a meta tag at all.

2.) Which me meta tags are used now?
The description tag is used by most engines (notable exception is Google) in their ranking algo and most of them give the words in this tag more weight than the same words in other areas of a site.

3.) How important are the tags for each search engine?

This depends on each search engine. I have a list (should not be cosidered definitive but informative) of what some of the SEs feel about meta tags HERE (http://search-engine-optimization.ecommercehosts.com/se_data_d.htm)

4.) Do meta keywords help or only hurt if used improperly now?
Meta tags used properly (and each engine may have a slightly different idea of what proper is) will not hurt you. They are necessary is some search engines, although the long term trend is that content and link popularity are becoming more and more important.

In addition, many engines still use the Title tag and the Description Tag in the search results page. They may be more important here than for ranking purposes since these are the words your prospective customers are going to use to decide if they want to click through to your site or not (assuming that you got a high enough ranking that they ever got to read them)

[rmridgew]

Can someone explain this one to me

<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

mac

[Advisor]

That tag just stops the microsoft smart tags from adding their advertising links to your site.

Jill

[rmridgew]

Do they really hurt?

[ihelpyou]

Microsoft has their 'smart tags' thing now included in the version 6 browser, but is not enabled. That tag is used to opt out from the links appearing on your site.

Not a big deal now as the tags are not enabled and a user has to enable them.

[JuniorHarris]

I do not like the idea of Microsoft adding tags to our site, after all if we felt those tags were necessary, then we would have added them ourselves!~ :rolleyes:

But also understand, the smartTag technology is not just in the new browser, but also many of the new office products. SmartTags will allow the different applications to link to each other. For example a word document could contain smartTags which link to excel spreadsheets. Though it may have been developed as a business productivity enhancement, it does have potential to infringe on webmasters rights.

[Advisor]

From what I understand, SmartTags are no different than the Gator/Kaaza/surf+ stuff once they're enabled. At least we can "opt-out" but it shouldn't be necessary. We should have to opt-in if we are interested.

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Very true. This will involve plugging up the huge security hole from the "activeX" module that is in the IE browser. That is what all these scumware companies are using to peddle their wares. This is also what I am focusing on with this whole issue. Unless the activeX thing is abolished, there will always be this type of scumware evolving.