Omit Meta Tag Keywords?

Someone told me that meta tag keywords have fallen from
favour and that it is better now to omit them.

He said that there has been so much abuse of keywords
that searchengines are now starting to ignore them, and
even to award negative ranking for their misuse.

He also said that omitting them forces the spiders to index
the whole page.

Any truth to his claims?

I am certainly no expert - I am just trying to figure things
out as I go along, so advice is appreciated. Thanks!

<kram (AT) kram (DOT) selkcub.moc> wrote ...

Someone told me that meta tag keywords have fallen from
favour and that it is better now to omit them.
He said that there has been so much abuse of keywords
that searchengines are now starting to ignore them, and
even to award negative ranking for their misuse.
He also said that omitting them forces the spiders to index
the whole page.

It is certainly true that meta keyword tags have been grossly abused for
years, and no major search engine pays them much heed.

But we do not know - for sure - that they have no current function, and we
certainly do not know they will never count again. And with the SEs recent
development of new metatags, anything is possible.

If you do choose to use them (and I recommend that), then do use them as
intended - with the known abuse, and the ease of detecting abuse, I'd wager
it's better not to use them at all, than to abuse them.

I think the bit about omission forcing the spiders to index the whole page
is simply twaddle, and best ignored. He can't have it both ways; if SEs
ignore Metatags, then how would their presence or absense force the spiders
to do anything?

And in my view, trying to force the spiders to do anything other than what
SEs created them to do, is inviting a penalty.

But read on ... I suspect many will disagree with me, some violently ;o)

Andrew

Andrew Heenan wrote:

kram (AT) kram (DOT) selkcub.moc> wrote ...
Someone told me that meta tag keywords have fallen from
favour and that it is better now to omit them.
He said that there has been so much abuse of keywords
that searchengines are now starting to ignore them, and
even to award negative ranking for their misuse.
He also said that omitting them forces the spiders to index
the whole page.

It is certainly true that meta keyword tags have been grossly abused for
years, and no major search engine pays them much heed.

But we do not know - for sure - that they have no current function, and we
certainly do not know they will never count again. And with the SEs recent
development of new metatags, anything is possible.

If you do choose to use them (and I recommend that), then do use them as
intended - with the known abuse, and the ease of detecting abuse, I'd wager
it's better not to use them at all, than to abuse them.

I think the bit about omission forcing the spiders to index the whole page
is simply twaddle, and best ignored. He can't have it both ways; if SEs
ignore Metatags, then how would their presence or absense force the spiders
to do anything?

And in my view, trying to force the spiders to do anything other than what
SEs created them to do, is inviting a penalty.

But read on ... I suspect many will disagree with me, some violently ;o)

Andrew's position is sound. He clearly has a good perspective on the
issue, one that is very easy to support.

--

Best Regards - Fred
http://www.rezultz-web-site-promotion.com/

kram (AT) kram (DOT) selkcub.moc wrote:

Someone told me that meta tag keywords have fallen from
favour and that it is better now to omit them.

He said that there has been so much abuse of keywords
that searchengines are now starting to ignore them, and
even to award negative ranking for their misuse.

Might be true: notice the *misuse* after negative. For normal use it might
be the case that:

- for some SEs it doesn't matter
- for some SEs it might give a small advantage

He also said that omitting them forces the spiders to index
the whole page.

Sounds like bullshit. I doubt there are many SEs that ever worked like
that.

I am certainly no expert - I am just trying to figure things
out as I go along, so advice is appreciated. Thanks!

Don't expect miracles from keywords. Focus on content and the content of
the title element and heading elements (h1 and friends).

--
John Freelance Perl programmer: http://castleamber.com/

Firefox Keywords: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html

"Andrew Heenan" <andrew.heenan (AT) virgin (DOT) net> wrote:

But read on ... I suspect many will disagree with me, some violently
;o)

Not me, so there goes the violence :-D

--
John isa Perl programmer: http://johnbokma.com/perl/perlprogrammer.html

Fox G Bar: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/google-...stomizing.html

He said that there has been so much abuse of keywords
that searchengines are now starting to ignore them, and
even to award negative ranking for their misuse.

"Starting to...?"

No - some have been ignoring them for some time. Years. Or so they
say. Yahoo certainly does NOT ignore them, as I was surprised to find
out accidentally recently.

I've also been playing with the other form <meta http-equiv=keywords
content="..">

In theory this is used only by the server when preparing HTTP headers -
and all of the servers I've tried it on ignore it.

But one of the bots DOES seem to use it. It's the only way I can
explain a very odd search hit I got last Thursday.

About two months ago I stopped worrying overmuch about Google and spent
some time working on the others. Their combined traffic now exceeds
Google.