next »

[SoCalSubbuteo]

Here is confirmation from Google that keyword meta tag is not used.

See the blog post & video on their blog here

Don't forget to make sure all of your pages have a decent meta description tag as it could be used as the snippet in the SERP.

[Ðaz]

Here is confirmation from Google that keyword meta tag is not used.

See the blog post & video on their blog here

Don't forget to make sure all of your pages have a decent meta description tag as it could be used as the snippet in the SERP.

Good to hear. I'm tired of seeing fools shove dozens of random keywords into their pages hoping to rank higher.

[cliffdodger]

This is nice news to finally have confirmed.  I'm sure Google's said something to this affect before but I haven't seen it written as clearly as this.

I wonder if yahoo, bing, and ask ignore meta keywords or not but then with their current share of the search market I'm not too concerned

[cogs]

i notice google matches search input to the text on my page, not to the meta description. it's pretty good at crawling text.

[SoCalSubbuteo]

i notice google matches search input to the text on my page, not to the meta description. it's pretty good at crawling text.

Google only uses the meta description for the snippet.

The meta description is not used for determining keywords for the page.

[cogs]

i compared the snippet to the meta description, and it was not using the meta, but the exact text within the page.

[SoCalSubbuteo]

i compared the snippet to the meta description, and it was not using the meta, but the exact text within the page.

When I compare the meta description to the snippet for my popular pages I find they are the same.

Why does Google care about meta descriptions?
We want snippets to accurately represent the web result. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL's content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics. Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't achieve this goal and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular, non-meta description, snippet. And it's worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won't affect your ranking within search results.

See here for the rest of the blog post.

This must mean that the pages you have looked at have what Google considers to be inadequate meta descriptions.

[cogs]

possibly... (and you're the expert, not me)... i think we're seeing 2 things at once: for your pages, google is using the meta description. for mine, the text. i have an text-only site. also, the keywords searched matched my text, which google drew from my page. if the keywords they entered would have matched my description, perhaps the snippet would have showed my description. i just know that for their input, i was usually first on the result page, with the text of my site matching.

[SoCalSubbuteo]

Try searching for site:learneasymusictheory.110mb.com & you will see that Google is using the meta descriptions for the snippets.  See here

And if you search for site:learneasymusictheory.110mb.com notes you are right it does show the part of the page with the search word/phrase in it.  See here

[cogs]

that's good to know, cause at least i didn't waste my time with the descriptions. when it was showing the text in the site, i was typing in the keywords that others had typed into google.

[SoCalSubbuteo]

Google does want you to have meta descriptions in your pages.  If you do not it is one of the errors they will report to you in their Webmaster Tools.

I hope it goes without saying that every page should have its own unique meta description.

[darrenbeige]

Repeat meta-descriptions are a certain no-no; they produce boiler-plate code, and are not targeted to individual pages so are not displayed. My personal view is to write unique keywords and descriptions (presented in meta-tags obviously) for almost all pages in which it is viable to do so. It doesn't really matter if they are not used, they don't affect visitors after all, and it just forms nice HTML.

[SoCalSubbuteo]

I have just been creating a Facebook group & I have noticed that when you create a link to a web page Facebook displays the meta description as the page's description.

So there is another reason to include meta descriptions in your pages.

[sunsetmotel]

 Actually Google is not being entirely honest in saying they don't use the meta keyword tags anymore.  While they don't use it for increasing page rankings they do penalise sites that include too many keywords or use keywords that are not directly relevant to the site content.

 Also whilst Yahoo is not the hit generator they used to be Yahoo Local still does use keywords so they are still worth having as long as you keep it to less than 25 and ensure they are relevant to your content.

 Graham.
 http://sunsetmotel.110MB.com

[SoCalSubbuteo]

Actually Google is not being entirely honest in saying they don't use the meta keyword tags anymore.  While they don't use it for increasing page rankings they do penalise sites that include too many keywords or use keywords that are not directly relevant to the site content.

Myth!

Read this Google blog post & watch the video.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

[sunsetmotel]

 LOL SoCal as if Google would actually admit they penalise sites that don't fit into exactly what they want   Try checking Webpronews.com articles and other non sponsored by Google sites and you will find that it's a commonly known fact. 

 I think they call what Google is doing "positive spin" ie emphasise the positive and people will not question the possible negatives  

 As I have said in another thread Google whilst being the major player in search engines is not by far the only one and indeed the minor players can generate more visits if your site is friendly to their bots.

 People tend to spend so much time trying to please Google they forget all the others which is exactly what Google wants (Think how life would be if everyone did the same for Microsloth and never tried Linux, Mozilla etc and you get my thinking).

 Graham.
 http://sunsetmotel.110MB.com

[SoCalSubbuteo]

Ok other search engines use different techniques, but... the subject of this thread is Google does not use the keywords meta tag

[darrenbeige]

LOL SoCal as if Google would actually admit they penalise sites that don't fit into exactly what they want   Try checking Webpronews.com articles and other non sponsored by Google sites and you will find that it's a commonly known fact. 

To be honest, I trust the Google source much more than any third-party website.

[SoCalSubbuteo]

To be honest, I trust the Google source much more than any third-party website.

I completely agree with you.  And I use to visit the WebProNews forums all the time.

[darrenbeige]

I completely agree with you.  And I use to visit the WebProNews forums all the time.

I quote

Fox Business' Neil Cavuto asked Schmidt in reference to Google's new Dashboard product how we really knew if Google deleted our personal data when we pressed delete via Dashboard. Schmidt's response:

"Because we say so and we would be sued (if we didn't)."

I have trust in Google, like I'm sure many others do. Even if some people don't believe Google, I am certain they have more trust in a multibillion pound company who owns the algorithm in question, than a relatively-small website making assumptions on Google's behalf.