39 replies to this topic

[morestar]

Morestar, since when Google ignores the alt attributes? Did I miss something?

Hey John. Big mistake on my part - if you read back you'll see wrote:

"And as we know, the meta description tag, like the title and alt attributes, got spammed. Google declared they ignore it."

Of course Google has never declared that they've ignored the meta description tag. I meant the meta keywords. So to clear the confusion I mean to write the following:

"And as we know, the meta keywords tag, like the title and alt attributes, got spammed. Google declared they ignore the meta keywords tag."

I never said Google is now ignoring the title and alt attributes - my god!

[morestar]

No, that's incorrect. Anyone who was paying attention has known that Google has never used the Meta keyword tag to know what a page is all about in terms of where it might show up in the search results.

It's actually correct. In everyone's early days of SEO we were lead to believe that that is exactly what keywords were for. There wasn't talk of semantics back in the beginning - not as much as today.

Also I never said it had anything to do with rankings.

Google does not ignore Meta descriptions or alt attributes. Nor have they ever claimed to.

I cleared that up in my last post.

They don't use only anchor text to determine relevancy. It is one of thousands of factors, albeit it is arguably one of the most important at the moment.
Not really. We're fairly unclear since much of what you said is incorrect.
No idea what you said/meant there.

So they don't or they do? If it is one of thousands of factors it looks like they do. Plus, they do use all parts of a document to determine relevancy.
I also didn't say they ONLY USE anchor text, I said:

That's the basis of it's ranking system - links and within those links are anchor text.

As far as I know, they've never used it so it's not something they declared that they're suddenly not using.
I certainly hope it's a very small crowd that believes that since it's been proven over and over again to be an incorrect belief. But you're welcome to believe whatever you want even if the facts say otherwise.

So you're saying that Google never read the meta keywords tag for it's purposes? I know Google declared they suddenly stopped using it. You're welcome to believe whatever you want to even if the facts prove otherwise too I suppose.

Correct, I typically wouldn't bother to do that if/when I use it at all (which is rarely). I only use it on my own site for my internal search engine.

Oh, wait, I'm mistaken. I recently was doing some optimization for a client's site and I did use the keyword tag for the phrases which I was optimizing in, but it was for purely selfish/lazy reasons...so that I would remember which phrases the page was optimized for and not have to go back to my notes. I know with 100% certainty that it will have no value beyond that.

So do you use it or don't you use the meta keywords tag Jill?

Well actually you say you do (rarely but you do) and you use it.

There's actually no use for the keyword tag for words that are already appearing on the page. The idea is to use it for keywords that don't already appear on the page, but which might be relevant anyway. After all, if they're already on the page, what good is it to use them again?

So again, when you use them, like in the examples above, what do you use them for?

[Jill]

I know Google declared they suddenly stopped using it.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find this declaration from them anywhere.

[morestar]

I think you'd be hard pressed to find this declaration from them anywhere.

Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking

[Jill]

He didn't announce that they just stopped using them.

I can tell you in all the years I've been optimizing for Google (since it was brand new) they didn't use the Meta keyword tag for ranking.

[morestar]

He didn't announce that they just stopped using them.

I can tell you in all the years I've been optimizing for Google (since it was brand new) they didn't use the Meta keyword tag for ranking.

You sure can. So what did/do you use them for?

Do you only add keywords into the meta keywords tag that are not on the page?

[Jill]

As I said, I don't typically use them. When I put them into my client's site so I would remember what they were a few weeks ago, it had to have been the first time I filled out that tag in at least 5 years maybe more.

When I did use them in the mid-1990's, I used to think you were supposed to put the keywords that were on the page. But then many years later I learned that wasn't what their intended use was for and mostly then used them for technical terms that were synonymous with the info on the page. You can likely find many of my very old articles on the topic.

I wish now I hadn't bothered to report this quirky finding of the Meta keywords tag and Google using it for filling out the onsite search. Because any time spent discussing this stupid tag, is time wasted.

And with that, I'm done discussing it, and closing this thread.

Added: See this article I wrote in 2002 about how the meta keyword tag should be for synonyms, etc.
http://www.highranki...om/issue029#seo

You'll note that Google wasn't using the meta keyword back then either. They were only a few years old at that point.

[Jill]

Mystery is solved. As someone earlier in this thread suggested, it turns out that what appeared to be Google using the words from my Meta keyword tag to initiate an internal site search query, was simply a link from my CMS.

The articles I post all have a "see related forum posts" link, which creates the page in question populated by whatever is in my Meta keyword tag, that I had seen Google index.

So Google was just following my own link.

This is good news as it means Google still is NOT in fact using the Meta keyword tag for anything, just as we had previously known.

[Alan Perkins]

Ba-da-boom!

[Jill]