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Went Hot: April 28, 2008 - 12:51 am
Posted By: theGypsy 70 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: SEO
18 Comments
Went Hot: April 28, 2008 - 12:51 am
Posted By: theGypsy 70 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: SEO
18 Comments
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Comments
That's funny. Sometimes our clients want proof that META kws don't matter, and most of us SEO's agree they don't, but has Google ever said so? Has Matt Cutts ever directly, authoritatively said so? One of the articles referred to by this sphinned article says Google told us this- can someone provide me a reference? Thanks!
Even a Danny Sullivan article (http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2165061, referred to by wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_tag#The_keywords_attribute does not quote Google or point to them- I don't expect them to tell us this stuff, but if they have, I'd like to have the reference for clients.
Most SEO's agree, acc to forums and the SEOmoz ranking factors... So now a court agrees- more weight... that's cool.
Why do you need Matt Cutts to tell you this? It's super easy to test for yourself.
@Rustybrick - if you read this, you might want to edit "as opposed to passed cases" to be "as opposed to past cases"... at least, pretty sure that's what you meant.
@Jill I think it was clear that I don't believe meta kws help. I don't need Matt Cutts to tell me this. Sometimes clients want third party info, especially from Google. Do you have the reference? Thanks!
How is it super easy to test for yourself? I thought it was nearly impossible to test for yourself because you can't create a controlled experiment. Let's say the test is I made it to number #1 for a moderately competitive keyphrase, and I didn't have any meta keywords. Well, maybe you would have made it to #1 faster if you did. Or maybe it's causing you to not rank as well as you could for other longtail related keywords. If you ask me, it's actually impossible to know the answer to the question of whether they matter using any sort of experiment.
Super easy. Put a made up word in your meta keyword tag and wait for Google to index the page. Do a search on that word and you'll see that your page won't show up for that word. Which means Google ignores the words within it.
@Jeeb90 Yes, you could test that way. And you would have learned that Google doesn't consider your page relevant for that made up word you only put into your keyword meta tag.
It doesn't prove anything else about Google's use or non-use of keyword meta tags.
Off topic keyword meta tag spamming was big once, and it sure seems logical that Google would stop ranking a page for words that only exist in the keyword meta tag. But does it read the meta tag? Does it care if there are meaningful keywords in it? How do you know?
@bbcarter asks a good question... especially if a Judge based on ruling on the "fact" that the keyword meta tag has no effect.
I don't know many SEOs who accept things as fact without a reasonable experimental basis or guidelines from Google.
It has been stated by Googlers many times, here's a couple:
http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/msg/2da344431bbc773d
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/answering-more-popular-picks-meta-tags.html
and then there is the lack of keywords mentioned in the metatags that Google does support:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=79812&query=meta&topic=&type=
Yahoo traditionally allowed meta keywords to be used for ranking purposes. It used to be a simple way to cover mis-spellings on a page. Have Yahoo stopped this? Or is this a case of "search engines = only Google"?
:)
For disclosure purposes, I didn't see this story and Sphunn a related one at http://sphinn.com/story/42960. Sorry gang
@mvandemar thank you, fixed.
First I agree they don't matter to SERPs at all in any way, shape or form. Still we ALWAYS use them. Huh? What? Why?
Due to the tremendous number of Web 2.0 and emeriging applications that utilize tag clouds and the potentional to generate our own. If you use good and real key words this is a great applicaiton of them. Even if a client doesn't want them now, so what that additional step ads about a minute per page to do. Additionaly the next person working on the page knows exactly what they prior SEO was thinking, with turnover that is also helpful.
I believe Yahoo IS using meta keywords to rank. I use it for misspellings that don't appear on my pages or in any links and my pages get ranked.
I have seen some evidence that Yahoo has used meta keywords to rank some pages for non-competitive phrases. I haven't researched this extensively though...there could still be external anchor text links helping the site rank for specific phrases.
Interesting that both cases involved companies that market heavily to the chiropractic industry. Wonder if there will be more.
There has been a lot of speculation that Yahoo DOES take META into consideration while ranking pages.
I've also personally tried experimenting and found that META gave me a slight edge when it came to SERPs on Yahoo.
It is a fact though that META is complete crap when it comes to Goog..
Yes, as the easy test confirms, Yahoo does indeed index the Meta keyword tag. As to how much weight it would be given, that's more difficult to measure. My opinion on it is that it is given very, very, very, very little weight.
Heh sounds like the headline should've been "US Courts Decide Yahoo Doesn't Matter"...and at this point, they'd almost be right. Not quite, but almost.