Meta Tag Considerations - Webmaster Forums - Webmaster forum for HTML, PHP, ASP, CSS and more

roxxy · 07-07-2006, 09:00 AM

Though most largest search engines do not 'spider' the keyword Meta Tags on your page, and in some cases ignore these completely, the use of Meta Tags on your page still serves an important purpose. There are literally hundreds, even thousands of smaller search engines scattered all across the Internet. Whilst the bigger engines tend to 'spider' whole pages instead and obtain their results from that, these smaller search engines don't have as much physical space to work with and must do things differently. It is in these particular engines you will find that Meta Tags are still very important.

SisXtian · 07-07-2006, 04:48 PM

So what about Flash pages? What do you use for the bigger search engines when you create a Flash site?

Julius · 07-18-2006, 10:59 PM

There's no harm in putting them in

suzane · 08-07-2006, 07:31 AM

Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain top rankings on crawler-based search engines. Today, the most valuable feature they offer to a web site owner is the ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described by some search engines. Now a days top search engines do not consider meta tags as an important factor. But if meta tags are used in proper way then they can be helpful to increase the website traffic as there are many small search engines who still consider meta tags as a key factor.

mwhym · 08-07-2006, 07:47 AM

While it doesnt hurt to have meta tags, in my years of experience I have come to the conclusion that their effectiveness is somewhat limited and that effectiveness seems to diminish as time goes by and search engines optimize the way they work.

O~Snapple · 08-07-2006, 02:49 PM

In response to all of this:

Meta Tags are extremely important; it’s the combination of Meta tags and keyword density that makes a site keyword rich.

In regards to Flash, I would recommend making a site that is a combination of flash and HTML to maximize the sites potential.

Spiders generally do not see flash they see the file name not what’s in the file. So for a site that looks good and places well in the SERPS go for a combination of Flash and HTML

NextWarrenBuffett · 08-07-2006, 05:36 PM

what search sites still use them?

O~Snapple · 08-07-2006, 09:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NextWarrenBuffett

what search sites still use them?

Its really all up in the air as to who uses them and who dosent everyone has a different opinion regarding that.

In my mind if anyone still uses them, you should always use them because there not going to hurt you if there used correctly.

~Snapple

**netridge** · 08-08-2006, 03:12 AM

Meta tags are still industry standard, so just keep using them until they are not. It's better to have then and be seen that no have them and be missed.

lvkyle · 08-09-2006, 04:55 AM

90% of my traffic comes from MSN, Google, and yahoo, and the rest from links and blogs. Maybe a small percentage after that is some other search engine that found my web site. For my description tag i use the first few sentences of the page.