Are meta tags case sensitive?

#1

Are meta tags case sensitive or does case sensitivity vary depending on
the search engine a user is using?

I've read that some search engines care about case wrt meta tags (for
keywords in particular) and I've read that other search engines aren't
case sensitive. Is this true? Is there a listing of which search engines
pay attention to case and which don't?

I have also read that some search engines throw away pages that repeat
keywords in the keywords meta tag. (So that if I include multiple
entries, using varying case, for the same word, some search engines
might ignore my page.) Is this true?

Most importantly, I guess I'm wondering whether there's a standard
regarding case in meta tags? I couldn't find anything definitive, but I
could just be mis-searching. (Maybe I searched using the wrong case. :-)

Thanks for any information.
Barbara

#2

Barbara White <bjw (AT) sei (DOT) cmu.edu> wrote:

Quote:

Are meta tags case sensitive or does case sensitivity vary depending on
the search engine a user is using?

What's so special about the <head> of a document? Why do you think
search engines would treat case differently in <head> and <body>?

AltaVista had always offered you a search for capital letters:
http://altavista.com/web/results?kgs=0&kls=0&q=htm
http://altavista.com/web/results?kgs...=0&q=%22Htm%22
http://altavista.com/web/results?kgs...=0&q=%22HTM%22
AllTheWeb and Google ignore case.

Quote:

I have also read that some search engines throw away pages that repeat
keywords in the keywords meta tag.

AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and Google ignore <meta name="keywords">
alltogether like (probably) most search engines.
MSN is known to index it but I don't know of any limitations.

Quote:

Most importantly, I guess I'm wondering whether there's a standard
regarding case in meta tags?

No. Just write your words in ordinary spelling as you would do in
the <body>.

--
Meanwhile at the Google Ranch ...
"I can't read this bloody site; it's all Falsh and JavaScrap."
"Forget it and move on! Still 2*718*281*828 pages to crawl."

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Are meta tags case sensitive?

HTML Writing HTML for the Web (comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html)

Are meta tags case sensitive? - 08-26-2003 , 01:12 PM

Re: Are meta tags case sensitive? - 08-26-2003 , 02:46 PM