Are Meta Tags Extinct? - Answers to Our Questions
(Page 4 of 4 )
The Answers to Our Questions
- “What does a search engine use to replace meta tag information if it is not present?” We have discovered that the search engine utilizes the title tag and the actual content of the page being spidered. Clever, huh?
- “How does a search engine that uses meta tags treat web pages that don’t have meta tag information?” The same way that a search engine that doesn’t use meta tags: they pull the information from the title tags and the page content.
- “How much of a difference does eliminating the meta tag information truly make?” Overall, there does seem to be a slight difference in the way that these pages without meta tags are indexed. Of the sites in our experiment, we found that many of them actually ranked higher in position of the SERPs than the sites that utilized meta tags. And while our research is still in its infancy, we do have to consider that our sites may have had additional issues that may have made the results look like the sites without meta tags did better, which in actuality it could be purely coincidence. And as hard as I find this to believe, I have to admit that this could indeed be a possibility.
- “Do Google and Yahoo still take meta tag information into account in order to penalize for spamming?” Yes, they do. So while general meta tags seem to be disregarded, they are still watched for keyword stuffing and other spamming techniques.
- “Which search engines still use meta tag information, and which do not?” This is not as black and white as we really hoped it would turn out. MSN has been shown to utilize both the keyword and description tags as part of their relevancy score to determine SERPs position. Yahoo doesn’t use the keyword tags in their relevancy score as far as we can tell lately, but will use the description tag. Google uses neither keyword or description tags in their relevancy score, and we believe, although this is a definite gray area, that Google disregards both of them in determining overall PageRank.
In conclusion, we have determined that meta keyword and description tags do not make one bit of difference in the ranking positions, as well as no difference in the SERPS pages or PageRank, unless they are considered spam. They certainly will not either make or break a site unless that site is spamming the search engine.
It is my firm belief, even before this experiment, and of course has now has been solidified, that meta tags were nearly deprecated in the search engines, with the exception of perhaps MSN. Still, the differences that we’ve seen at all in MSN were almost inconclusive in our experiment’s results.
We will honestly have to watch the sites in the control and test groups over the course of several updates to have the most accurate trends, of course, however for the sake of argument; we wanted to at least alert you to this grand phenomenon.
I’m afraid in the face of the changing SEO industry that those SEOs that will rely heavily on their meta keyword and descriptions tags are going to find that more and more they will be fairly disappointed in the effectiveness of optimized keyword and description tags. This will particularly upset those that have really no other ideas as far as page optimization, and several of those in the industry will have to rethink their entire strategy and optimization tactics. But relax; you still have MSN to love your optimized meta keywords and description tags.
For information about Jennifer Sullivan Cassidy's professional search engine optimization services, please visit her site at First Class SEO.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
|
| · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | · | | | | |
|
