38 replies to this topic

[qwerty]

Now that Yahoo is allowing us to block the use of their directory descriptions in the SERPs with no "NOYDIR" meta tag, I'm wondering if it's considered proper syntax to have a single robots meta tag with multiple content attributes, or if we're better off keeping them separate.

In other words, can we do

HTML

<meta name="robots" content="noodp, noydir">

or should it be

HTML

<meta name="robots" content="noodp">
<meta name="robots" content="noydir">

Or, for that matter, could we do

HTML

<meta name="robots" content="noodp, noydir, nofollow">

[Jill]

Now that Yahoo is allowing us to block the use of their directory descriptions in the SERPs with no "NOYDIR" meta tag,

Really? When did that happen? (Was I ???)

That said, the way you have it like this:

<meta name="robots" content="noodp, noydir, nofollow">

certainly seems like that should be fine.

No reason to create a completely different robots meta name tag. (I'm no HTML expert but know enough to firmly believe that would be fine!)

[qwerty]

They only announced it today, but it was posted everywhere.

We’re adding support for the Meta tag called ‘NOYDIR’ that will complement the ‘NOODP’ Meta tag, which we already support. If you’re unfamiliar, the ‘NOODP’ Meta tag is basically a way for webmasters to indicate that Open Directory Project (ODP) titles and abstracts will not be used in search results for their pages. While we continue to pull from various sources to provide the best title and abstract for a given page in search results, we realize that webmasters may still want the ability to exclude titles and abstracts from the Yahoo! Directory. So, as promised, we’re providing support for ‘NOYDIR’ which will recognize the following Meta tags on your pages:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOYDIR">

or

<META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOYDIR">

[Jill]

On second thought, I'm not sure that way would work...

They only announced it today, but it was posted everywhere.

Yeah, I'm just getting out tonight...haven't been anywhere all day!

[MaKa]

HTML

<meta name="robots" content="noodp, noydir, nofollow">

I'd say that should work.

[Nick Clark]

Good Info

Thanks

Nick Clark

[St0n3y]

I'm using this

<meta name="robots" content="noodp, noydir">

I'm waiting for Yahoo to spider the site. I'll let you know.

[Michael Martinez]

I would definitely recommend against using two robots meta tags. The last time I saw anyone test duplicate meta tags, the search engines ignored the second one.

[qwerty]

That's a good point. But I guess you could do a general robots tag for noodp, and then another one specifically telling slurp not to use the Yahoo description.

It would be nice if we could get official word on this from Yahoo. Does anyone have a connection there?

[Karri]

Danny Sullivan (aka Search Engine Land) was actually a step ahead on this one

http://searchenginel...0228-140603.php

Karri

[Randy]

Yahoo's Priyank Garg also said the combined instructions in a single tag would be okay for Y! in the comments of the original announcement Bob linked to above. There was a caution as far as not knowing how other engines might react with it all in one.

Hopefully Danny can follow up later when he gets definitive answers from Google and MSN. I would guess they'd be okay with it and simply ignore NOYDIR since they wouldn't understand it.

[Jill]

I added the noydir to my page last night after reading this thread. I was going to do it in the same tag with my noodp but i didn't like the way it looked so made a separate one.

It's already reindexed by Yahoo and I have to say it's sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo nice to finally see my rightful Title in Yahoo.

[Randy]

Yanno what's going to be funny?

When Yahoo! sees a influx of new orders to have sites willing to pay to be listed in their Directory because of this one little change.

I and many others I talk to have avoided Y!Directory like the plague because of the snippet they then displayed. For years. Now I'll have to reconsider this decision on a site-by-site and base it purely on the cost instead. In my case that's probably cost them several thousand dollars per year since I run several domains.

I wonder if anybody there has thought to do some comparison to see if they get a spike in Y!D submissions now?

[St0n3y]

It makes me wonder why they ever forced that to begin with. I can't think of ever hearing someone being happy with directory titles and descriptions used in the general SERPS. This should not have been an opt out issue, but rather one of opting in.

FYI: my site was re indexed by Yahoo yesterday and I still have my directory titles. Time to figure out why.

[Michael Martinez]

It makes me wonder why they ever forced that to begin with. I can't think of ever hearing someone being happy with directory titles and descriptions used in the general SERPS. This should not have been an opt out issue, but rather one of opting in.

I suspect that both Google and Yahoo! concluded at some point in the past that the directory titles and descriptions were generally more reliable than on-page titles and descriptions because of third-party editorial standards.