MSN Showing Meta Keywords in description Options

[frankinidaho]

Our sites rank really well in MSN and everyone of our sites has a <table> shell format. So, I'd throw out the worrying about tables. Seems to me that topic comes up yearly...

here is something really annoying. I've worked extremely hard on getting top rankings for "print server" (brooksnet.com) in MSN.

Well, we finally achieved the number one ranking out of tons and tons of competition. BUT... now they are listing our META Keywords as the description. What is also strange, we have another one (from brooksnet.com) a little below that and it lists it correctly.

The kicker, we use the same "make/install" program to build our pages and I just can't figure... any clues???

[qwerty]

I'm confused by this too. I just noticed while going through last month's logs for one of my sites that one of my pages is coming up on an MSN search with a snippet that consists of the tail end of the meta description tag, followed by the entire meta keywords tag, followed by one word from the on-page content.

Very strange...

[BobetteKyle]

Yeah, strange. Mine seem to be a mix of meta-tags and snippets from the navigation. Only looked at a few, but doesn't seem to be anything taken from the main page content.


<added...I only use tables, frankinidaho, and don't have a problem with organic rankings. So, no worries here either about tables.>

[thx1138]

I just alluded to this in a posting in The Pub but thought I'd mention it here, MSN UK search is currently showing search results with the keywords meta content shown, is this new, a blip, an indication of the importance MSN seach places on keywords?

[qwerty]

THX, I've merged your post into a thread about MSN doing that in general.

I'm currently running one of my decidedly non-scientific tests on this. I created three pages involving the word "x amo nio id" (broken up here so that this page won't start ranking for it). One of the pages uses the word in the body, the meta description and the meta keywords, another uses it in just the keywords and on the page, and the third only uses it in the keyword tag.

If I search MSN for the word, the first two come up (even if I set my preferences to allow three pages from one domain) -- not the one with it only in the meta keywords.

So based on that, and I know that's not much, it may be that it needs to be on the page, but they may use the content of the meta tags in the snippet.

[qwerty]

Well, isn't this interesting...

An MSN search on my magic word still brings up the two pages containing the word on the page and not the one with it only in the meta keywords tag, while using the content of the keywords tag in the snippet.

However, on a Yahoo search only one page comes up: the one with the word in the keywords tag only! The snippet they're displaying is the meta description: "This time the magic word is only in the meta keywords tag."

I think they may be intentionally messing with me (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

[Leann_Pass]

I just clicked on your yahoo search and it says there are no results for that query. Was it short lived or did I hit a different database?

This is all very interesting!

[qwerty]

I'm not getting any results either now. It could be a different DB, but I'm leaning toward a conspiracy to make me crazy enough to publish articles on the importance of the meta keywords tag and destroy my reputation.

[BobetteKyle]

I'm thinking maybe just a conspiracy to make you crazy. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif) Yahoo just showed me a listing (xam3.htm) .

[jimm]

I like your little test, even though it is not giving the results that I wanted.

Yahoo!
xam3.htm
<meta description /> for snippet

MSN
xam1.htm
<meta description /> <meta keywords /> for snippet
(Although when you hit this page you have the *Peekaboo* css bug so you cannot read the copy on the page as a user.)

xam2.htm
<meta description /> <meta keywords /> for snippet
(Same Peekaboo bug.)

Google - nothing.

I guess I will going and adding meta tags to all my pages again.

Thanks for sharing this test!

Jim

[qwerty]

Peekaboo bug? What's that? What browser are you using?

Anyway, the onpage text isn't important. It's a paragraph from the manifesto of Esperanto, and on two of the pages I threw the keyword in at a random spot.

[jimm]

Hi Bob,

I am using IE 6.0. That is the only browser that I am aware of that has the bug. [http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/peekaboo.html] Will explain it. I am not allowed to put links in my posts as I am still too new! Basically, the text will not display to the user. The browser will allocate the space and the text is there, it is just invisible. To make it even weirder, you can highlight and select the text, then it becomes visible.

I *think* that I have fixed this issue by defining a width on the containing HTML element.

I realize that it is not important in this case, I just thought I would be kind and notify you of a potential issue, BEFORE it ever became a problem. But everyone exhaustively QA's every page on their site right? (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

Jim

[qwerty]

Crazy. I bet it has something to do with the length of the page, since none of my other pages have this problem. The fix that Matthew Somerville came up with seems to have put things right.

Thanks for pointing it out.

[jimm]

You're welcome!